UC-NRLF 


$B    SME    DTM 


CENTENNIAL 


1792.    February: 


CHARLES   FRANCIS   ADAMS, 


CQJUu^/aJUjLuixjiJOl 


Ujuaxi^^  \^ 


Digitized  by  tine  Internet  Archive 

in  2008  with  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/centennialmilestOOadamrich 


OLD    PLYMOUTH    ROAD. 


Ninth  Milesione. 


THE  CENTENNIAL   MILESTONE. 


AN     ADDRESS 


[N    COMMEMORATION    OF 


Ci^e  €)nc  l^imDrcDt]^  annfbersiart 


INCORPORATION  OF  QUINCY,  MASS. 


Delivered  July  4,  1892. 


BY 

CHARLES  FRANCIS  ADAMS. 


CAMBRIDGE: 

JOHN     WILSON     AND     SON. 

©ntbersttg  53ress. 


ADDRESS. 


OOME  months  ago  I  had  occasion  to  discuss  certain  details 
of  the  celebration  we  are  now  engaged  in  with  a  greatly- 
valued  friend  of  mine,  bearing  a  name  inscribed  on  many  pages 
of  the  records  of  Old  Braintree,  and  who,  in  his  own  person,  is 
one  of  the  few  remaining  specimens  of  the  antique  stock, — 
the  town-meeting  stand-bys  of  former  Ouincy.  In  the  course 
of  our  discussion  I  referred  to  an  address  as  one  mode  of  com- 
memoration, telling  him  frankly  that  in  my  judgment  the  day 
of  such  addresses  was  over,  —  that  we  had,  in  fact,  of  late  been 
deluged  with  them,  especially  since  what  may  well  enough  be 
described  as  the  epoch  of  revolutionary  centennials  came  in. 
The  not  unnatural  result  had  followed;  and,  as  we  all  know 
from  our  own  experience,  we  now  turn  with  a  sense  of  weari- 
ness, if  not,  indeed,  of  surfeit,  from  that  page  of  a  daily  paper 
the  columns  of  which  are  headed  with  an  announcement  that  yet 
one  more  commemoration  has  been  observed  in  the  custom- 
ary way.  These  historical  orations  and  addresses  had,  as  I  then 
went  on  to  argue,  at  one  time  served  their  purpose,  and  it  was 
a  useful  purpose  ;  for  in  them  is  recorded  much  of  historical 
worth  which  otherwise  might  not  have  been  preserved  :  but 
this  was  before  the  days  of  town  histories  and  historical  socie- 
ties ;  and  now  the  oration  or  address  had  become  the  medium 
by  means  of  which  a  quantity  of  rhetoric  or  sentiment  of  small 
present,  and,  so  far  as  my  observation  went,  of  no  future,  value 
was  forced  on  the  jaded  eye  and  ear  of  an  inattentive  public. 
Forgotten  as  soon  as  uttered,  even  the  future  antiquarian  is 
not  likely  to  disturb  the  dust  which  accumulates  upon  those 


M272215 


6  THE   CENTENNIAL   MILESTONE. 

yellowing  pages.  As  I  then  told  my  friend,  almost  every  period 
seems  to  have  some  favorite  mode  of  expression:  —  the  last 
century  was  in  Massachusetts  the  era  of  sermons  and  pulpit 
discourses,  and  it  industriously  stored  up  a  vast  literature  of 
that  description,  the  present  dreariness  of  which  is  inexpres- 
sible :  ours  has  been  the  century  of  orations  and  secular  ad- 
dresses,—  the  Ciceronian  period  of  America  ;  and  so,  during 
it,  rhetoric  and  eloquence,  much  too  often  of  the  tinsel,  aca- 
demic sort,  have  been  made  to  serve  the  purpose  which  logic 
and  theological  fervor  served  before.  And,  finally,  I  expressed 
the  belief  that  the  student  of  the  twentieth  century  would  hold 
this  form  of  expression  of  our  time  in  no  greater  value  than  we 
hold  the  sermons  and  occasional  discourses  of  the  fathers.  But 
we  too  will  have  seen  ourselves  in  print ! 

As  I  argued  thus  with  the  friend  to  whom  I  have  referred, 
he  refused  to  accept  my  conclusions,  replying  that  in  his  judg- 
ment it  was  inexpedient  on  occasions  like  the  present  to  dis- 
pense with  the  time-honored  feature  of  an  address.  He  not 
inaptly  compared  it  to  the  planting  of  a  milestone,  which 
marked  for  all  future  time  some  point  which  a  community  had 
reached  in  its  endless  journey.  Here  we  pause  for  a  moment ; 
and,  resting  from  the  march,  we  cast  a  glance  backward  over 
the  road  by  which  we  have  come,  as  well  as  forward  over  that 
we  are  yet  to  traverse.  At  such  a  time,  he  went  on,  we  are,  or 
ought  to  be,  a  world  unto  ourselves :  why,  then,  trouble  our 
minds  about  other  people  or  about  posterity,  wondering  whether 
other  people  are  looking  at  us,  or  whether  posterity  will  bear 
us  in  memory.?  —  it  is  enough  that  we  have  got  thus  far  in  our 
progress,  and,  throwing  off  our  loads  for  this  day,  we  pile  up 
the  stones  which  in  the  future  shall  serve  as  a  memorial  that 
here  we  rested  as  we  passed  the  hundredth  milepost  of  Quincy. 
Then  he  referred  to  other  days,  reminding  me  of  milestones 
planted  in  bygone  times  by  the  hands  of  those  who  are  dead  ; 
and  as  he  enumerated  these,  I  had  to  admit  force  in  what  he 
said.  First  was  the  milestone,  now  more  than  a  century  and 
a  half  old,  which  we  owe  to  the  Rev.  John  Hancock,  then 
pastor  of  the  North  Precinct  Church  of  Braintree,  —  a  mile- 
stone which  has  come  down  to  us  in  the  form  of  two  sermons 


THE   CENTENNIAL   MILESTONE.  7 

delivered  by  him  to  his  people,  then  gathered  on  Sunday, 
the  26th  of  September,  1739  (N.S.),  within  the  walls  of  the 
old  meeting-house  which  stood  hard  by  this  spot.  After  the 
delivery  of  which  discourses  the  ancient  records  say  that,  "  be- 
ing the  Lord's  day,  the  First  Church  of  Braintree,  both  males 
and  females,  solemnly  renewed  the  covenant  of  their  fathers 
immediately  before  the  participation  of  the  Lord's  Supper." 
The  century  of  church  life  was  complete,  and  a  fitting  memo- 
rial of  it  provided,  —  a  memorial  which,  though  little  noticed 
by  the  great  outer  world,  some  of  us  here  would  be  sorry  not 
to  have. 

Another  century  passed  away,  and  on  the  same  occasion, 
on  the  same  date  in  1839,  though  not  from  the  same  pulpit, 
William  Parsons  Lunt  in  the  stone  temple,  as  it  is  called, 
which  eleven  years  before  had  succeeded  on  the  training-field 
the  ancient  meeting-house  in  which  John  Hancock  delivered 
his  centennial  address,  —  in  this  stone  temple,  this  very  edifice. 
Dr.  Lunt  set  up  another  of  my  friend's  milestones,  which  re- 
mains to-day  a  valued  and  lasting  memorial  of  the  preacher's 
eloquence  and  scholarship.  Few  now  remember  him,  but 
William  Parsons  Lunt  was  in  his  day  a  great  pulpit  orator,  — 
and  he  was  great  because  he  was  natural.  The  second  mile- 
stone is  his  monument. 

Fifty  years  more  elapsed,  and  only  the  other  day,  in  Septem- 
ber, 1889,  the  Rev.  Daniel  Munro  Wilson,  now  here  with  us, 
placed  a  third  stone,  marking  the  end  of  another  half  century 
of  ecclesiastical  life,  —  a  memorial  worthy  of  the  others,  and 
one  the  value  and  significance  of  which  will  grow  with  revolv- 
ing years. 

Influenced,  I  will  freely  admit,  by  these  arguments  and  illus- 
trations of  my  friend,  I  find  myself  here  to-day,  and  here  for  a 
purpose,  —  to  help  plant  another  milestone.  "  All  things  come 
to  him  who  waits  ; "  and  so,  amid  present  indifference,  my  ap- 
peal is  to  the  twentieth  century,  or  even  later:  —  for  why  may 
it  not  be  that  in  the  year  2042,  when  the  city  of  Quincy  cele- 
brates its  two  hundred  and  fiftieth  anniversary,  —  and  it  is  just 
as  certain  that  the  city  of  Quincy,  either  by  itself  or  as  part  of 
some  larger  municipality,  will  be  here  then  as  it  is  that  not  one 


5  THE   CENTENNIAL   MILESTONE. 

of  US  will  be  here,  —  why  may  it  not  well  be  that,  in  2042,  when 
our  very  gravestones  are  crumbling,  those  then  dwelling  here- 
about may  rest  for  a  moment  as  they  come  to  the  quarter- 
millennial  milestone,  and  in  doing  so  may  hunt  up  the  record 
of  to-day,  just  as  we  hunt  up  the  sermons  of  John  Hancock, 
dwelling  for  a  moment  with  curiosity  and  even  interest  on 
that  memorial  of  a  remote  past,  —  clasping  hands  across  the 
centuries.  It  is  not  many  spoken  words  that  can  hope  for  even 
a  single  listener  a  century  and  a  half  after  they  drop  from  the 
speaker's  mouth  ;  yet  not  a  day  passes  but  some  one  looks  with 
interest  on  the  single  ancient  milestone  of  1720  which  still 
within  Ouincy  limits  marks  the  old  Plymouth  road.  Rude, 
rough  and  ill-proportioned,  it  has  cut  upon  it,  besides  the 
distance  from  Boston  and  the  date,  the  initials  J.  N.,  —  stand- 
ing, I  am  told,  for  "  Capt.  Lieut."  Joseph  Neal,  as  he  is  desig- 
nated on  his  gravestone  in  the  burying-ground  opposite.  One 
of  the  twenty-one  children  of  Henry  Neal,  —  for  in  those  days 
there  were  families  patriarchal,  —  Joseph  Neal,  was  a  select- 
man of  Braintree  from  1698  to  171 5,  and  died  in  1737,  leaving 
his  mark  inscribed  on  that  stone  by  the  old  Plymouth  road, 
which  had  already  stood  there  more  than  half  a  century  when 
the  minute-men  tramped  by  in  the  April  days  which  fol- 
lowed Concord  fight.^  So  it  is  to-day  Joseph  Neal's  stone. 
In  like  manner,  on  the  century  ecclesiastical  milestone  of 
the  town,  the  name  of  John  Hancock  is  inscribed ;  while  the 
bi-centennial  bears  that  of  William  Parsons  Lunt,  and  the 
quarter  millennial  that  of  Daniel  Munro  Wilson.  And  now 
we  plant  this  centennial  civic  milestone  of  to-day. 

Still,  in  turning  over  the  printed  memorials  of  the  past,  we 
cannot  help  thinking  of  how  much  greater  interest  and  value 
they  would  be  to  us  had  those  called  upon  to  prepare  them  been 
less  ambitious  and  abstruse,  —  had  they  only  felt  moved  to  talk 
to  us  instead  of  to  their  congregations,  and  so  to  place  on  rec- 
ord something  which,  though  commonplace  and  matter-of-fact 
enough  then,  would  be  quaint  and  curious  now.  For  instance, 
what  a  stroke  of  inspiration  would  it  have  been  if  the  Rev.  John 
Hancock,  when  in  1739  he  preached  those  two  discourses  to 
1  See  Appendix  A,  p.  41. 


THE   CENTENNIAL   MILESTONE.  9 

his  people  in  the  ancient  wooden  meeting-house  of  1732,  then 
almost  new,  —  what  a  stroke  of  inspiration  would  it  have  been 
if,  in  a  series  of  notes  or  in  some  preliminary  pages,  he  had 
described  for  our  benefit  it  and  the  people  then  gathered  in  it,  — 
the  dress  they  wore  and  the  forms  of  worship  they  followed  ; 
the  houses  in  which  they  dwelt,  the  streets  in  which  they 
walked,  the  vocations  they  pursued;  —  had  he  given  us,  in  a 
word,  a  pictorial  census  of  the  Quincy  of  1739!  It  was  all  so 
very  familiar  to  him  and  to  his  hearers  that  the  thought  doubt- 
less never  entered  his  mind ;  but  now,  could  this  town  as  it 
stood  here  a  century  and  a  half  ago  be  for  an  instant  recalled 
to  life,  it  would  seem  as  strange  and  unreal  to  us  as  any  foreign 
land,  —  the  very  language  and  accent  in  use,  though  intelligible 
enough,  would  strike  oddly  on  the  ear ;  —  only  the  bay,  the 
islands  in  it,  and  the  everlasting  hills  would  be  the  same.  As 
an  illustration,  take  this  description  of  the  meeting-house  in 
which  John  Hancock  preached,  as  it  was  first  seen  by  one  who 
came  to  Quincy  a  young  bride  nearly  a  century  ago,  but  still 
more  than  fifty  years  after  the  father  of  the  great  signer  of  the 
Declaration  had  been  followed  to  the  graveyard  opposite :  — 

"  There  were  [in  Quincy  at  that  time]  only  two  churches,  both 
ancient  wooden  edifices, — the  Episcopal  and  the  Congregational. 
The  pews  in  the  centre  of  the  latter,  having  been  made  out  of  long, 
open  seats  by  successive  votes  of  the  town,  were  of  different  sizes,  and 
had  no  regularity  of  arrangement,  and  several  were  entered  by  narrow 
passages,  winding  between  those  in  their  neighborhood.  The  seats, 
being  provided  with  hinges,  were  raised  when  the  congregation  stood 
during  the  prayer,  and,  at  its  conclusion,  thrown  down  with  a  mo- 
mentum which,  on  her  first  attendance,  alarmed  Mrs.  Quincy,  who 
feared  the  church  was  falling.  The  deacons  were  ranged  under  the 
pulpit,  and  beside  its  door  the  sexton  was  seated ;  while,  from  an  ap- 
erture aloft  in  the  wall,  the  bell-ringer  looked  in  from  the  tower  to 
mark  the  arrival  of  the  clergyman.  The  voices  of  the  choir  in  the 
front  gallery  were  assisted  by  a  discordant  assemblage  of  stringed 
and  wind  instruments.  In  1S06,  when  the  increased  population  of 
the  town  required  a  larger  edifice,  the  meeting-house  was  divided 
into  two  parts ;  the  pulpit,  and  the  pews  in  its  vicinity,  were  moved 
to  a  convenient  distance,  and  a  new  piece  was  inserted  between  the 
fragments." 


lO  THE   CENTENNIAL   MILESTONE. 

Not  impossibly  we  might  learn  something  of  value  for  to- 
day's occasion  from  this  criticism  which  I  have  ventured  on 
what  has  been  left  us  by  those  gone  before.  The  present,  in 
its  every-day  surroundings,  seems  matter-of-fact  and  uninter- 
esting enough  to  us ;  none  the  less,  the  time  will  assuredly 
come  when  this  commonplace  present  of  ours  will  be  very 
much  otherwise  to  those  who  here  succeed  us.  The  remote 
is  always  strange.  I,  if  no  one  else,  therefore,  may  be  per- 
mitted to  express  a  hope  that  to-day's  address  will  constitute 
a  small  part  only  of  our  centennial  memorial.  That  memorial, 
on  the  contrary,  should  be  designed  to  do  what  the  Hancock 
and  Lunt  memorials  fail  to  do,  —  it  should  present  us  to  the 
future  as  we  are.  But  this  rests  with  others;  it  is  that  por- 
tion of  commemorative  work  which  deals  more  especially  with 
externals,  physical  conditions,  —  a  matter  of  statistics,  plans 
and  portraiture ;  and  however  well  and  thoroughly  it  may  be 
done,  there  is  still  a  field,  and  a  not  unimportant  field,  which 
it  cannot  cover :  and  that  field  is  my  province. 

As  municipal  bodies  go  in  America,  —  weighed,  that  is,  in 
the  census  scales,  and  classified  according  to  the  number  of 
its  houses  and  inhabitants,  the  aggregate  of  its  wealth,  and 
the  variety  and  value  of  its  industrial  products,  —  weighed  in 
these  census  scales,  no  great  degree  of  prominence  can  be 
claimed  for  Quincy.  In  point  of  population  she  stands  twenty- 
fourth  only  among  the  twenty-eight  cities  of  Massachusetts  ; 
while  in  the  nation  as  a  whole,  judged  by  the  same  standard, 
she  is  merely  one  out  of  ninety-two  cities  of  the  fifth  class,^ 
holding  the  one  hundred  and  ninety-seventh  place  in  the  length- 
ening roll  of  American  municipalities.  Neither  is  Quincy  the 
seat  of  any  great  institution  of  learning  or  special  industry, — 
unless,  indeed,  it  may  still  claim  pre-eminence  for  its  granite ; 
but,  none  the  less,  Quincy  has  had  its  history,  nor  has  that 
history  been  devoid  of  individuality  or  interest.  Unlike  many 
larger  communities,  the  record  of  Quincy  is  by  no  means  ex- 
hausted in  the  pages  of  the  census,  for  through  more  than  two 

1  Under  the  system  of  division  pursued  in  tlie  preparation  of  the  Eleventh 
United  States  Census,  cities  having  a  population  of  over  15,000  and  less  than 
25,000  are  included  in  the  fifth  class. 


THE   CENTENNIAL   MILESTONE.  I  I 

hundred  and  fifty  years  those  dwelling  in  the  territory  now 
known  by  that  name  have  had  to  face  their  problems,  and 
have  done  so  as  best  they  could.  Here  in  America  it  may 
be  questioned  whether  a  state  of  Chinese  immobility  is  ever 
reached  ;  certainly  it  has  never  been  reached  in  Quincy. 
Sometimes,  indeed,  the  change  and  consequent  re-adjust- 
ment involved  in  the  solution  of  these  problems  may  have 
been  slow,  —  so  slow  that  those  then  living  and  affected  by 
them  may  not  have  been  conscious  that  they  were  going  on  ; 
but  all  the  same  they  were  going  on,  and  if  the  story  of  them 
when  told  is  not  found  instructive  as  well  as  interesting,  the 
fault,  we  may  rest  assured,  is  not  in  the  subject,  but  in  him  who 
treats  it.  No  particular  interest  ever,  so  far  as  the  average 
man  can  see,  attached  to  the  English  Selborne,  nor  was  there 
anything  about  the  place  or  its  conditions  to  attract  especial 
notice;  but  a  century  and  more  ago  Gilbert  White  lived  and 
saw  and  wrote  at  Selborne,  and  Selborne  has  since  been  classic 
ground.  It  is  the  study  and  statement  of  these  processes  of 
change  and  re-adjustment  ever  going  on,  now  forward  and 
then  backward,  action  and  reaction,  conditions  now  out  of 
balance,  and  then  again  in  equilibrium,  —  it  is  the  study  and 
statement  of  this  which  makes  history  ;  and  all  this  can  be 
quite  as  well  studied  on  the  small  theatre  as  on  the  large.  It 
is  only  a  matter  of  size,  —  a  question  of  bigger  or  smaller; 
and,  as  Gilbert  White  proved,  here  too  the  painter,  and  not 
the  dimensions  of  the  canvas,  makes  the  picture. 

Were  the  story  of  Quincy  told  by  some  historical  Gilbert 
White,  it  would  be  transmuted  to  a  hand-mirror,  in  which 
could  be  seen  reflected  to  the  life  every  important  phase 
through  which  New  England  and  even  American  development 
has  passed  from  1622  to  the  present  time.  Unfortunately  Gil- 
bert Whites  are  not  forthcoming  in  response  to  every  civic  de- 
mand, and  of  such  as  are  forthcoming  few  indeed  "  inherit  nor 
the  pride  nor  ample  pinion  that  the  Theban  eagle  bear;  "  and 
so  the  story  invariably  has  to  be  told  in  the  conventional  way. 
When  thus  approached,  our  local  Quincy  record  divides  itself 
into  three  distinctive  periods,  the  study  of  each  of  which,  if 
entered  upon  in  the  true  spirit,  I,  at  least,  find  full  of  interest; 


12  THE   CENTENNIAL    MILESTONE. 

and  each  period  had  its  own  peculiar  problems  to  deal  with. 
These  periods  were,  first,  the  germinal ;  next,  the  stationary  ; 
and  last,  the  progressive,  —  and  they  naturally  followed  each 
other  in  the  order  named.  The  first,  or  germinal,  period,  be- 
gan in  1625,  when  Thomas  Morton  established  himself  at 
Mount  Wollaston,  planting  his  Maypole  there  two  years  later  ; 
and  it  ended  in  1642,  when  this  territory  was  given  the  name 
of  Braintree  and  organized  as  a  civil  community.  The  sec- 
ond, or  stationary  period,  beginning  in  1640,  may  be  said  to 
have  lasted  one  hundred  and  ninety  years,  —  coming  to  an 
end  in  1830,  about  the  time  the  ancient  meeting-house  of  the 
Rev.  John  Hancock  made  room  for  the  edifice  in  which  we  are 
now  gathered.  In  1830  began  the  third  period,  that  of  rapid 
progress  and  consequent  readjustment,  —  the  period  in  which 
we  have  lived,  and  that  of  which  some  of  the  as  yet  unsolved 
problems  will  to-day  engage  our  attention. 

Of  these  three  periods  of  town  history  the  first,  or  germinal, 
is  by  far  the  most  interesting,  for  the  thread  of  its  earliest 
story  interweaves  itself  with  great  events  involving  the  fate  of 
dynasties  and  empires,  —  famous  names  now  and  again  flash- 
ing across  the  local  record  ;  while  at  another  time,  a  little 
later  on,  infant  Braintree,  not  yet  known  as  such,  was  the 
centre,  the  very  hotbed,  of  historical  episodes  which  left  in- 
effaceable marks  on  the  annals  of  Massachusetts.  But  this  ger- 
minal period  pertains  rather  to  Old  Braintree  than  to  Ouincy, 
to  the  seventeenth  century  rather  than  to  that  the  close  of 
which  we  commemorate.  Indeed,  for  this  occasion  the  Brain- 
tree germinal  period  is  almost  as  prehistoric  as  that  time 
before  the  ice  age,  when,  geologists  tell  us,  the  bed-rocks 
underlying  our  town  towered  up  two  hundred  feet  higher  than 
now,  and  were   fifty  miles  from  the  seaboard.^ 

But  if  the  Braintree  germinal  period  is  for  the  purposes  of 
to-day  thus  remote,  it  is  otherwise  with  both  the  subsequent 
periods,  —  that  which  I  have  called  the  stationary,  and  that  of 
rapid  progress  ;  both  of  which,  though  less  dramatic  than  the 
first,  have  an  interest  of  their  own. 

While,  as  I  have  already  said,  New  England  communities 

1  See  Appendix  B,  p.  44. 


THE   CENTENNIAL   MILESTONE.  13 

never  reach  a  condition  of  immobility  such  as  is  understood 
to  be  characteristic  of  China,  and  while  all  change,  be  it 
rapid  or  slow,  involves,  soon  or  late,  a  process  of  readjust- 
ment of  conditions  to  environment,  it  is  undeniable  that  the 
process  of  change  and  the  consequent  readjustment  went  on 
slowly  and  at  the  moment  imperceptibly  in  the  town  life  of 
the  stationary  period  of  New  England  history.  Referring  to 
that  provincial  life  in  one  of  his  great  orations,  Edmund 
Burke  described  it,  with  that  inimitable  happiness  of  phrase 
possessed  by  him  and  by  Shakespeare  alone  among  English 
writers,  as  the  existence  of  a  people  "  still,  as  it  were,  in  the 
gristle,  and  not  yet  hardened  into  the  bone  ; "  and  this  it 
exactly  was  while  five  generations  followed  each  other  slowly 
across  the  little  stage,  the  atmosphere  of  which  was  at  once 
theological  and  icy.  Change  was  neither  expected  nor  de- 
sired. A  simple,  laborious,  unaggressive  race,  those  com- 
posing it  were  born,  lived  and  died  ;  and  concerning  them 
there  is  little  more  to  record.  During  that  long  period  the 
world,  both  of  Europe  and  America,  was  more  or  less  con- 
vulsed;  revolutions  took  place  in  England,  in  Germany  and 
in  France,  dynasties  rose  and  fell,  the  house  of  Brunswick 
succeeded  that  of  Stuart,  and  Europe  waged  war  after  war,  in 
the  course  of  which  Canada  passed  under  English  rule,  and 
the  American  colonies  became  independent;  but,  through  all 
the  turmoil,  the  local  towns  of  Massachusetts  —  Braintree  and 
Quincy  among  the  number  —  pursued  the  even  tenor  of  their 
way.  The  changes  going  on  without,  of  which  the  noise  filled 
the  world,  were  all  political  changes,  and  the  readjustments 
they  necessitated  were  likewise  merely  political ;  but  in  the 
New  England  towns  no  new  social  forces  were  at  work,  nor  was 
the  existing  equilibrium,  social,  religious,  economical  or  political, 
seriously  disturbed.  Thus  in  1830  the  inhabitants  of  Quincy 
cultivated  the  same  fields  their  fathers  had  cultivated  in  1650, 
and  used  in  so  doing  much  the  same  implements  ;  they  navi- 
gated the  same  waters  with  similar  vessels.  Each  generation 
in  the  course  of  an  eventless,  patient,  laborious  life  accumu- 
lated something,  leaving  to  the  next  generation  more  fields 
under   cultivation,  better  dwellings  and   farm   buildings,   and 

3 


14  THE  CENTENNIAL   MILESTONE. 

some  additional  comforts  and  appliances  of  life  ;  but  domestic 
and  social  usages,  and,  indeed,  all  the  practical  machinery  of 
existence,  remained  much  the  same.  While  the  outer  world 
influenced  but  little  the  village  community,  the  village  commu- 
nity in  no  way  affected  the  outer  world.  It  has  a  strange 
sound  now,  but  it  is  none  the  less  true  that  prior  to  1830  — 
only  sixty  years  ago  —  steam  was  an  unknown  factor  in  the 
life  and  industry  of  Quincy,  and  what  we  term  machinery  was 
unknown.  As  it  was  in  1640,  so  it  remained  a  hundred  and 
ninety  years  after  ;  and  within  the  memory  of  men  hardly  yet 
regarded  as  old,  the  horse,  the  ox,  the  wind  and  the  stream 
were  the  only  forces  auxiliary  to  man.  In  1826  the  granite 
railway  was  constructed  here  in  Quincy,  and  four  years  later 
the  first  railroad  was  incorporated  in  Massachusetts;  but, 
incredible  as  it  now  seems,  more  than  one  hundred  and  sixty 
years  elapsed  after  Braintree  v/as  incorporated  as  a  town,  be- 
fore even  a  baggage  wagon,  adapted  also  to  the  carriage  of 
persons,  was  run  over  the  road  between  Boston  and  Quincy,  — 
so  trifling  was  the  intercourse  and  traffic  between  the  two 
places,  though  but  seven  miles  apart.  Even  then,  when  in 
1804  the  experiment  of  such  a  conveyance  was  tried,  it  was 
found  through  twenty  years  to  meet  every  existing  need  ;  and 
not  until  1823  did  the  stage-coach  period  begin.  But  the 
wine  had  now  begun  to  ferment,  and  three  years  later  the 
railway  came :  then,  slowly  at  first,  but  more  and  more  rapidly 
later  on,  the  era  of  change  set  in  ;  and  by  degrees  the  customs 
and  institutions  which  English  and  French  revolutions,  wars 
of  independence  and  conquests  of  Canada  had  affected  little 
if  at  all,  steam  and  electricity  radically  altered. 

With  the  change  came  the  necessity  of  readjustment.  The 
body  politic  had  to  adapt  its  political  system  to  the  new 
environments,  and  the  alterations  to  be  made  in  the  political 
system,  if  satisfactory  results  were  to  be  brought  about,  had 
to  be  just  as  far-reaching  as  had  been  the  change  in  the 
social,  material  and  industrial  conditions;  for  they  all  move 
together.  It  is  with  the  problems  involved  in  these  changes, 
and  the  consequent  readjustment  and  adaptation,  that  we 
have   found    ourselves    confronted    during   the   closing   years 


THE   CENTENNIAL   MILESTONE.  1 5 

of  our  first  century  of  independent  civic  life.  During  its 
second  century  those  problems  will  have  to  be  solved,  and 
it  is  to  them  and  their  solution  I  now  propose  to  address 
myself. 

But  first  it  is  necessary  to  state  what  those  problems  are, 
or  rather  what  that  problem  is ;  for,  when  all  is  said  and  done, 
the  problem  is  single,  and  as  easy  to  state  as  it  is  difficult  to 
solve.  Coming,  then,  directly  to  it  and  using  few  words,  the 
system  —  the  time-honored  system  —  of  local  municipal  gov- 
ernment under  which  our  fathers  lived  and  the  country  pros- 
pered and  grew  has,  in  the  presence  of  the  changes  of  the  last 
fifty  years,  completely  broken  down  and  been  in  large  degree 
abandoned.  In  Boston,  first  among  the  communities  of  Mas- 
sachusetts, they  abandoned  it  seventy  years  ago,  just  as  we 
here  in  Quincy,  following  many  precedents  more  recently 
established,  abandoned  it  four  years  ago ;  we  abandoned  it  as 
others  abandoned  it,  not  because  we  wanted  to  abandon  it, 
but  because  we  had  to  abandon  it ;  and  we  had  to  abandon  it 
simply  because  change  necessitated  readjustment.  Thus  our 
problem  is  not  ours  only;  on  the  contrary,  it  is  that  common 
problem  of  municipal  government  under  republican  institu- 
tions which  for  many  years  has  caused,  and  for  more  years 
yet  is  likely  to  cause,  thoughtful  and  observant  Americans  to 
be  perplexed  in  the  extreme. 

Under  circumstances  like  these  there  is  no  small  advantage 
gained  by  looking  at  the  situation  through  the  eyes  of  another, 
especially  if  that  other  chances  to  be  a  cool,  reflecting  outside 
observer.  Those  lost  and  wandering  in  the  woods  cannot  see 
for  trees,  and  proximity  destroys  the  sense  of  proportion. 
The  last  and,  taken  altogether,  the  most  friendly  and  appre- 
ciative of  all  recent  foreign  observers  of  things  American,  — 
that  one  the  circulation  of  whose  work  has  far  exceeded  any 
other  of  the  same  kind,  —  speaking  of  the  growth  of  American 
cities,  refers  to  it  as  "  among  the  most  significant  and  least 
fortunate  changes  "  in  the  character  of  our  population,  and  as 
a  matter  of  "  high  concern  to  America,  .  .  .  because  it  is  ad- 
mittedly the  weak  point  of  the  country;  "  then,  truthfully  say- 
ing that  "  no  political  subject  has  been  so  copiously  discussed 


1 6  THE   CENTENNIAL   MILESTONE. 

of  late  years  in  America  by  able  and  experienced  publicists," 
he  adds  these  comments  of  his  own  :  — 

"  There  is  no  denying  that  the  government  of  cities  is  the  one 
conspicuous  failure  of  the  United  States.  The  deficiencies  of  the 
National  government  tell  but  little  for  evil  on  the  welfare  of  the 
people.  The  faults  of  the  State  governments  are  insignificant  com- 
pared with  the  extravagance,  corruption,  and  mismanagement  which 
mark  the  administrations  of  most  of  the  great  cities.  For  these 
evils  are  not  confined  to  one  or  two  cities.  The  commonest  mis- 
take of  Europeans  who  talk  about  America  is  to  assume  that  the 
political  vices  of  New  York  are  found  everywhere.  The  next  most 
common  is  to  suppose  that  they  are  found  nowhere  else.  In  New 
York  they  have  revealed  themselves  on  the  largest  scale.  They  are 
'gross  as  a  mountain,  monstrous,  palpable.'  But  there  is  not  a  city 
with  a  population  exceeding  two  hundred  thousand  where  the  poison 
germs  have  not  sprung  into  a  vigorous  life  ;  and  in  some  of  the 
smaller  ones,  down  to  seventy  thousand,  it  needs  no  microscope  to 
note  the  results  of  their  growth.  Even  in  cities  of  the  third  rank 
similar  phenomena  may  occasionally  be  discerned,  though  there,  as 
some  one  has  said,  the  jet  black  of  New  York  or  San  Francisco  dies 
away  into  a  harmless  gray.  .  .  . 

"  For  in  great  cities  we  find  an  ignorant  multitude,  largely  composed 
of  recent  immigrants,  untrained  in  self-government  ;  we  find  a  great 
proportion  of  the  voters  paying  no  direct  taxes,  and  therefore  feeling 
no  interest  in  moderate  taxation  and  economical  administration  ; 
we  find  able  citizens  absorbed  in  their  private  businesses,  cultivated 
citizens  unusually  sensitive  to  the  vulgarities  of  practical  politics, 
and  both  sets  therefore  specially  unwilling  to  sacrifice  their  time  and 
tastes  and  comfort  in  the  struggle  with  sordid  wire-pullers  and  noisy 
demagogues.  In  great  cities  the  forces  that  attack  and  pervert 
democratic  government  are  exceptionally  numerous,  the  defensive 
forces  that  protect  it  exceptionally  ill-placed  for  resistance.  Satan 
has  turned  his  heaviest  batteries  on  the  weakest  part  of  the 
ramparts. 

"...  What  Dante  said  of  his  own  city  may  be  said  of  the  cities 
of  America :  they  are  like  the  sick  man  who  cannot  find  rest 
upon  his  bed,  but  seeks  to  ease  his  pain  by  turning  from  side  to 
side."  ^ 

1  Bryce,  The  A?nerican  Commoniucalth,  chaps.  1. — lii. 


THE   CENTENNIAL   MILESTONE.  1/ 

As  we  well  know,  the  picture  is  not  overdrawn,  and  we  must 
reconcile  ourselves  as  best  we  may  to  the  fact  that  the  dis- 
turbance—  the  incessant  tossing  of"  the  sick  man  who  cannot 
find  rest  on  his  bed"  —  will  continue  until  the  readjustment  is 
effected.  The  difficulty  is  radical,  deep-seated,  striking  down 
into  the  vitals  of  our  political  life.  One  hundred  years  ago, 
when  Quincy  came  into  independent  civic  existence  as  a  town 
of  nine  hundred  inhabitants,  there  were  in  all  America  but 
twelve  cities,  and  the  largest  of  them  had  but  forty  thousand 
inhabitants ;  there  are  now  seventy-four  cities  with  more 
than  that  number.  Quincy  alone,  a  city  of  the  fifth  class,  — 
one  of  hundreds,  —  has  to-day  nearly  half  the  population 
New  York  had  when  Quincy  became  a  town.  In  1792  there 
was  no  city  government  in  Massachusetts.  Boston,  with 
twenty  thousand  inhabitants,  was  governed  by  its  board  of 
selectmen  chosen  in  town  meeting ;  and  it  continued  to  be 
so  governed  for  yet  thirty  years  more,  and  until  the  twenty 
thousand  had  become  forty  thousand.  To-day  there  are 
twenty-eight  cities  in  the  Commonwealth,  and  nearly  two- 
thirds  of  its  inhabitants  live  within  city  limits  and  under  city 
government.  Thus  the  old  town  system  is  disappearing  ;  with 
us  here  it  has  disappeared. 

Students  of  the  laws  which  guide  the  process  of  what  is 
known  as  evolution  state  as  a  fundamental  principle  that  "  the 
greater  the  amount  of  progress  already  made,  the  more  rapidly 
must  progress  go  on  ; "  though  the  average  man  is  always,  in 
an  unreflecting  way,  inclined  to  assume  that  the  course  of  events 
will  stop  where  it  is,  and  things  for  the  future  remain  about 
as  they  now  are.  But  in  this  matter  the  student,  and  not 
the  average  man,  is  right ;  and  moreover  the  swift  and  ever 
accelerating  process  now  going  on  from  natural  causes  in  the 
matter  of  change  from  town  to  city  government  is  further 
artificially  stimulated  by  that  protective  system  which  has  be- 
come such  a  fixed  and  leading  feature  in  the  economical  and 
fiscal  policy  of  the  national  government.  Thus  all  things 
in  this  country  seem  to  combine  to  draw  population  away 
from  a  state  of  rural  and  agricultural  diffusion  to  one  of 
manufacturing  and  urban  concentration. 


1 8  THE   CENTENNIAL   MILESTONE. 

Not  many  of  us  living  here  in  Quincy  realize  how  complete 
this  change  has  been  in  our  own  case,  and  how  rapidly  it  has 
gone  on  of  late,  —  how  little  in  any  respect  the  Quincy  com- 
munity of  1892  resembles  that  of  1792.  I  have  already  alluded 
to  that  Quincy,  —  the  wholly  vanished  Quincy  of  the  earlier 
time;  but,  since  I  did  so,  we  have  been  peering  forward  on  the 
road  we  are  yet  to  travel,  trying  to  make  out  its  direction  and 
character,  whether  broad  and  straight  and  level,  or  devious, 
steep  and  narrow.  I  shall  presently  ask  you  to  take  another 
and  longer  onward  look  ;  but,  before  doing  so,  let  us,  pausing 
yet  at  our  centennial  milestone,  look  back  once  more  for  an 
instant.  There  are  among  us  those,  nor  are  they  few  in 
number,  who  have  recently  joined  the  column,  and  so  are 
but  imperfectly  informed  both  of  the  way  we  have  traversed, 
and  of  what  occurred  as  we  journeyed  along  it.  This  looking 
back,  moreover,  is  not  only  necessary  for  the  purposes  of  my 
address,  but  it  is  the  historical  portion  of  it;  and,  as  such,  an 
essential  of  the  place  and  day. 

This  Quincy  of  ours  you  know,  and  to  us  it  is  a  very  com- 
monplace concern  ;  nor  shall  I  weary  you  by  describing  it. 
You  do  not  need  to  be  told  of  its  inhabitants,  nearly  twice  ten 
thousand  in  number,  with  names  English,  Irish,  Scotch,  French, 
Swedish,  and  of  many  other  origins,  those  bearing  which  wor- 
ship in  many  churches,  or  not  at  all,  while  they  earn  their 
bread  in  multifarious  ways.  It  would  be  little  better  than 
waste  of  time  were  I  to  repeat  before  you  the  figures  of  the 
school  census,  and  tell  you  how  many  scholars  —  with  a  con- 
siderable proportion  of  whom  English  is  not  even  the  mother 
tongue  —  are  taught  in  the  numerous  districts,  or  try  to  esti- 
mate the  weight  of  the  tonnage  which  daily  grinds  over  the 
fast-increasing  mileage  of  our  overburdened  highways.  In 
one  region,  the  Quincy  of  to-day  is  but  the  retiring-room,  the 
sleeping  apartment,  of  the  Boston  counting-house;  while  in 
another  it  is  a  mining  camp  ;  and  in  yet  a  third  a  manufactur- 
ing community.  There  is  hardly  a  farm  left  within  the  muni- 
cipal limits;  while,  except  for  purposes  of  pleasure  or  at  our 
lumber  and  coal  yards,  we  have  no  more  to  do  with  the  ocean 
or  navigation  than  if  the  seaboard   still  were,  as   it   was  ten 


THE   CENTENNIAL   MILESTONE.  19 

thousand  years  ago,  fifty  miles  away.^  But  why  go  on  with  the 
idle  enumeration  of  things  familiar  ?  On  the  contrary,  let  me 
go  back  at  once  to  the  Ouincy  of  one  hundred  years  ago  ; 
nor,  nearly  forty  years  later,  in  1830,  had  it  undergone  any 
material  change. 

The  petition  for  the  incorporation  of  the  town,  as  spread  on 
the  first  pages  of  its  earliest  book  of  records,  was  signed  by 
one  hundred  and  fifty  persons,  the  bearers  of  fifty-nine  several 
names,  every  one  of  which  was  English  in  its  origin  ;  or  else 
those  bearing  such  few  as  were  not  originally  English  names 
had  been  so  long  domiciled  in  New  England  that  the  foreign 
names  had  become  thoroughly  Anglicized.^  The  fifty-nine 
names  were  thus  indicative  of  one  homogeneous  stock ;  those 
bearing  them  spoke  the  same  language,  followed  the  same 
traditions,  had  the  same  social  customs,  pursued  much  the 
same  vocations,  and  worshipped  according  to  one  creed  and 
in  a  common  meeting-house.  So  completely  was  this  last  the 
case  that  one  of  the  townsmen  of  that  generation,  referring  to 
a  certain  thing  as  being  of  most  unusual  occurrence,  declared, 
in  a  paper  which  has  come  down  to  us,  that  it  was  "  as 
rare  an  appearance  as  a  Roman  Catholic,  —  that  is,  as  rare 
as  a  comet  or  an  earthquake." 

As  nearly  as  can  be  ascertained,  the  population  of  the  new 
town  numbered  nine  hundred  souls  in  all,  divided  into  some- 
what less  than  two  hundred  families,  whose  accumulated 
wealth  may  possibly  have  amounted  in  value  to  a  half  million 
of  dollars.  Their  property  consisted  almost  exclusively  of  land 
and  the  buildings  thereon,  with  their  contents  ;  for  paper  secu- 
rities in  our  sense  of  the  term  were  then  unknown,  except  in 
the  form  of  personal  or  town  notes,  or  loans  secured  by  bond 
and  mortgage.  Taxation  was  almost  nominal ;  and  during  the 
first  ten  years  of  Quincy  town  life  the  average  annual  levy  for 
what  are  now  known  as  municipal  purposes,  that  is,  purposes 
exclusive  of  the  support  of  the  church  and  pastor,  which  then 
devolved  on  the  town,  —  exclusive  of  this,  the  average  annual 
levy  between  1792  and  1800  was  but  ^1,000,  or  about  $1.00 
per  year  to  each  inhabitant.  It  is  now  over  two  hundred 
1  See  Appendix  C,  p.  47.  2  ggg  Appendix  D,  p.  48. 


20  THE   CENTENNIAL   MILESTONE. 

times  as  much,  while  the  average  amount  exacted  annually 
from  each  inhabitant  has  risen  nearly  thirteen  fold  since  1792, 
and  more  than  seven  fold  since  1840:  it  was  $1.00  when 
the  century  began,  and  $1.72  when  the  century  was  half 
over;  it  is  $12.57  now  that  the  century  is  closed.  In  1792 
the  appropriation  for  the  support  of  the  town  schools  —  or 
rather  the  town  school,  for  there  was  but  one  —  amounted 
to  $250;  and  in  1829  it  amounted  to  but  $1,563,  of  which 
$60  was  for  fuel  and  $5.00  for  incidentals,  —  these  latter  being 
"  ink  and  brooms."  The  amount  expended  for  the  educa- 
tion of  each  child  in  the  public  schools  was  then  $3.00  per 
annum;  it  is  now  $16.  It  was  the  same  with  the  highways. 
There  are  at  this  time  in  Quincy  some  fifty  miles  of  public 
streets,  much  of  which  is  subjected  to  a  traffic  in  the  car- 
riage of  granite  which  no  pavement  known  to  the  engineer  or 
road-builder  is  able  long  to  bear;  and  in  1890  over  $40,000 
was  spent  in  the  maintenance  of  these  streets.  In  1792  the 
old  original  Plymouth  road, — a  section  of  the  great  "Coast 
Road"  of  1639,  —  with  its  few  arterial  branches,  alone  existed; 
and  at  the  town  meeting  of  that  year  a  vote  was  passed  "that 
a  sum  of  money  be  raised  for  the  purpose  of  repairing  the 
Blue  Hill  road,"  as  the  highway  from  Boston  to  Bristol  county 
was  called  ;  "  and  it  was  further  voted  that  three  pounds,"  or 
$10,  "be  raised  for  repairing  the  same."  It  was  then,  the 
record  farther  tells  us,  voted  that  "  a  new  pall  be  purchased  by 
the  selectmen  ; "  for  the  town  in  those  days  made  decent  pro- 
vision for  the  sepulture  of  the  dead  as  well  as  for  the  spiritual 
welfare  of  the  living.  Nearly  thirty  years  later,  in  1820,  a  com- 
mittee appointed  to  investigate  the  subject  reported  that  the 
room  in  which  the  one  town  school  was  kept  was  so  crowded 
that  the  scholars,  two  hundred  and  four  in  number,  "  were  ob- 
liged to  wait  one  for  the  other  for  seats,  notwithstanding  the 
master  gave  up  his  desk  and  used  every  other  means  in  his 
power  to  accommodate  them  ;  "  and  the  committee  then  went 
on  to  submit  a  plan  for  certain  alterations,  at  an  estimated  cost 
of  $200,  by  which  two  hundred  and  fifty  scholars  were  to  be 
brought  together  in  one  room  and  under  one  master,  "  with  an 
assistant  when  necessary."     Ten  years  later,  in  1830,  the  sum 


THE   CENTENNIAL   MILESTONE.  21 

of  $600  was  deemed  an  adequate  provision  for  a  year's  main- 
tenance of  the  highways. 

But  instead  of  going  on  with  these  details,  I  will  come  at 
once  to  what  the  records  show  was  the  golden  period  of  Quincy 
town  government,  more  especially  as  so  doing  affords  oppor- 
tunity for  a  tribute  to  one  now  wellnigh  forgotten,  but  who, 
during  that  golden  period,  was  the  great  administrator  of 
Quincy  town  affairs.  I  am  one  of  the  not  large  and  fast- 
decreasing  number  of  Quincy  people  who  still  remember 
Thomas  Greenleaf,  —  for  he  died  nearly  forty  years  ago;  and 
I  remember  him  only  as  an  aged  man,  with  white  hair,  a 
deeply  wrinkled  face  and  anxious,  troubled  eyes,  driving  to 
and  fro  through  the  village  street,  from  his  home  to  the  post- 
office  or  to  church,  in  a  queer  old-fashioned  vehicle  drawn  by 
a  horse  which  seemed  as  much  advanced  in  years  as  its  mas- 
ter, and  hardly  less  retired  from  active  life.  Thomas  Greenleaf 
was  then  the  shadow  of  his  former  self ;  but  in  his  day  and 
generation  he  was  a  power  in  Quincy. 

Between  1800  and  1835  ^he  people  of  the  town  were  well  to 
do,  but  they  had  a  traditional  horror  of  waste,  and  scrutinized 
their  tax-bills  closely.  While  the  scale  of  town  expenses  was 
so  limited  that  no  item  escaped  notice,  and  the  sum  of  five  dol- 
lars spent  for  an  unaccustomed  purpose  would  not  improbably 
lead  to  a  town  meeting  discussion,  anything  like  corruption  in 
public  office  was  of  course  impossible  ;  it  would  have  been  de- 
tected at  once.  Though  the  conditions  were  thus  most  favor- 
able to  good  administration  of  affairs,  prior  to  18 10  the  town 
business  had  been  done  in  a  loose,  unsystematic  way.  The 
annual  appropriations  were  made  by  viva  voce  vote  ;  the  treas- 
urer received  the  money  which  the  constable  collected;  and 
the  selectmen  drew  it  out  and  paid  it  over  to  the  minister,  the 
schoolmaster,  and  those  charged  with  the  care  of  the  town's 
poor.  No  reports  or  estimates  were  made,  no  papers  placed 
on  file;  everything  was  done  on  a  general  understanding.  A 
cruder,  less  organized  system  would  be  difficult  to  imagine  ; 
and  little  could  be  said  in  its  favor,  except  that  it  was  natural, 
and,  like  most  natural  things,  it  worked  well  under  the  circum- 
stances.    As  the  town  increased,  some  individual  was  needed 

4 


22  THE   CENTENNIAL    MILESTONE. 

to  organize  such  a  degree  of  system  as  the  new  conditions  de- 
manded,—  there  was  a  distinct  call  for  a  man  of  administrative 
capacity;  and  that  man  appeared  in  Mr.  Greenleaf,  —  the  typi- 
cal, natural  leader  and  administrator  of  a  Massachusetts  town  ; 
one  whose  field  was  small,  but  who  was  none  the  less  a  states- 
man in  his  way,  and  a  statesman  of  a  school  which  the 
community  cannot  do  without.  For  in  this  case  the  rule  is 
reversed,  —  it  is  the  less  which  includes  the  larger  ;  and,  where 
every  minor  division  of  a  community  habitually  produces  a 
body  of  selectmen  certain  of  whom  are  capable  of  organizing 
and  administering  the  affairs  of  a  town,  the  community  as  a 
whole  can  be  depended  upon  always  through  a  process  of 
natural  selection  to  evolve  statesmen  in  an  emergency.  It 
was  so  in  the  Revolution;  —  the  town  meeting  was  the  nursery 
of  the  Continental  Congress,  —  the  selectman  developed  into 
the  cabinet  official. 

Of  this  class  was  Thomas  Greenleaf.  Boston  born,  he  was 
graduated  at  Harvard  in  1790;  and  coming  to  Quincy  to  live 
in  1803,  he  remained  there  until  his  death  in  1854.  He 
speedily  began  to  take  an  active  interest  in  town  affairs,  and 
his  subsequent  life  showed  how  useful  in  a  local  way  a  man  of 
character,  fair  parts,  and  good  business  capacity  can  always  be. 
He  belonged  to  the  colonial  gentry  ;  and,  a  man  of  property, 
he  was,  it  almost  goes  without  the  saying,  a  strong  Federalist. 
In  1808,  and  for  thirteen  consecutive  years  thereafter,  he  was 
chosen  to  represent  the  town  in  the  General  Court,  and  during 
those  years  he  became  the  leading  man  in  Quincy ;  and  so 
continued  until  after  1835.  As  such  he  organized  the  town's 
business,  and  he  did  it  admirably.  The  change  began  about 
18 12,  when  the  cost  of  the  town  poor  had  grown  to  be  a  scan- 
dal. Mr.  Greenleaf  took  the  matter  in  hand,  and  caused  an 
almshouse  to  be  built.  He  was  chairman  of  the  building  com- 
mittee. The  sum  of  $2,000  was  appropriated  for  the  purpose, 
— for  the  scale  then  was  small,  —  and  when  the  building  was 
completed,  Mr.  Greenleaf  reported,  with  a  pride  which  he  did 
not  attempt  to  conceal,  that  though  no  allowance  had  been 
made  for  omissions  in  the  estimates,  and  much  extra  work  had 
been  done,  —  amounting  to  twenty  per  cent,  —  yet,  notwith- 


THE   CENTENNIAL   MILESTONE.  23 

Standing  this,  the  new  almshouse  was  finished,  and  every  bill 
paid,  with  ^84.48  of  the  appropriation  unexpended.  Under  his 
close  business  management  the  cost  of  maintaining  the  poor 
was  then  reduced  by  more  than  one  half;  and  his  reports  on 
the  subject,  spread  in  full  on  the  records,  are  as  interesting 
to-day  in  presence  of  that  still  unsolved  problem  of  pauperism 
as  they  were  when  written,  more  than  seventy  years  ago. 

Having  reduced  the  care  of  the  poor  to  a  system,  Mr.  Green- 
leaf  turned  his  attention  to  other  matters.  Insensibly,  but 
steadily,  the  method  of  conducting  public  business  in  all  its 
branches  was  brought  into  strict  order.  In  March  the  annual 
town-meeting  was  held,  and  over  it  Mr.  Greenleaf  presided  as 
moderator ;  the  full  list  of  town  officers  was  chosen,  and  the 
various  articles  in  the  warrant  referred  to  special  committees. 
The  meeting  then  adjourned.  In  April  another  meeting  was 
held,  and  the  committees  on  the  almshouse,  the  schools,  the 
town  lands,  and  the  town  finances  presented  their  reports, 
which  were  in  writing,  and  entered  into  every  detail.  Another 
adjournment  was  then  had,  and  in  May  the  appropriations  were 
voted.  Everything  was  thus  made  public  and  of  record  ;  and 
everything  was  open  to  criticism  and  debate.  As  a  system  of 
local  government,  under  the  conditions  then  existing,  it  did  not 
admit  of  improvement. 

It  is  needless  to  say  that  under  the  Greenleaf  regime  Quincy 
prospered  greatly.  A  debt  of  some  $2,000  was  incurred  on 
account  of  the  War  of  18 12  and  for  building  the  almshouse  in 
1 814,  but  it  was  speedily  paid  off  out  of  the  surplus  which  a 
better  management  saved  from  the  regular  annual  appropria- 
tions for  the  care  of  the  poor.  In  18 16  the  town-hall  and 
schoolhouse  was  burned  down,  —  for  town-hall  and  schoolhouse 
still  were  one.  The  amount  appropriated  for  a  new  building 
to  serve  both  purposes  was  $2,400.  Mr.  Greenleaf  again  was 
chairman  of  the  building  committee  ;  and  once  more  he  in  due 
time,  with  overflowing  pride,  reported  the  work  done,  all  the 
bills  paid,  whether  included  in  the  original  estimate  or  found 
to  be  necessary  as  building  went  on,  with  an  unexpended 
balance  of  $362.61  remaining  in  the  hands  of  the  treasurer. 
Though  in  doing  this  a  new  town  debt  had  been  incurred,  good 


24  THE    CENTENNIAL    MILESTONE. 

financial  management  soon  paid  it  off  without  increase  of 
taxation.  What  was  this  but  the  administration  of  a  state  in 
miniature  ?  —  and,  when  all  is  said  and  done,  how  considerable, 
do  you  suppose,  in  the  measurement  of  the  infinite,  is  the 
difference  between  the  successful  management  of  the  affairs  of 
a  town  and  those  of  an  empire  ? 

The  digression  may  seem  long,  but  not  only  does  it  cut  on 
our  milestone  a  name  which  rightfully  belongs  on  it,  but  in  no 
other  way  could  I  give  so  clear  an  idea  of  what  Massachusetts 
town-government  was  at  its  best  period  and  in  its  purest  form. 
Under  proper  conditions  no  better  government  was  ever  de- 
vised by  human  ingenuity;  —  I  should  almost  be  willing  to  go 
further,  and  say  no  other  form  of  government  was  ever  devised 
equally  good.  But  town  government  also  has  its  limitations ; 
and  Quincy,  like  Boston  before,  in  due  time  found  them  out. 

The  Greenleaf  regime  ended  nearly  sixty  years  ago,  and 
during  those  sixty  years  the  differentiation  of  modern  life  has 
taken  place.  It  is  one  thing  to  manage  the  affairs  of  a  small 
village  community  through  the  machinery  of  town-meetings  ; 
it  is  quite  another  to  manage  those  of  a  place  numbering  a 
population  of  a  score  of  thousands.  In  1830  the  annual  appro- 
priation of  Quincy  for  necessary  town  expenses  was  ;^4,500. 
It  has  been  seen  how  this  sum  was  voted  by  a  small  body  of 
men,  all  knowing  each  other  well,  having  a  community  of  in- 
terest, and  acting  under  a  usage  which  had  the  force  of  law. 
Forty-five  years  later,  in  1876,  the  annual  appropriation  was 
^116,000,  and  the  articles  in  the  warrant  had  swollen  from  half 
a  dozen  in  number  to  nearly  forty.  The  character  of  the  town- 
meeting  also  had  changed.  In  place  of  the  few  score  farmers 
or  tillers  of  the  soil,  following  the  accustomed  lead  of  a  man 
like  Thomas  Greenleaf  in  this  century,  or  John  Quincy  in  the 
last,  and  asserting  themselves  only  when  they  thought  their 
traditions  or  equality  were  ignored,  —  in  place  of  this  small, 
easily-managed  body,  there  met  in  the  Quincy  town-meeting 
of  the  later  period  a  heterogeneous  mass  of  men  numbering 
hundreds,  jealous,  unacquainted,  and  often  in  part  bent  on 
carrying  out  some  secret  arrangement  in  which  private  interest 
over-rode  all  sense  of  public  welfare. 


THE   CENTENNIAL   MILESTONE.  25 

In  Other  words,  —  and  in  this  respect  our  experience  in 
Quincy  has  been  merely  a  repetition  of  the  experience  of 
those  dwelling  in  many  other  places,  —  government  through 
town-meeting  must  always  remain  a  primitive  form  of  govern- 
ment, and  one  adapted  only  to  the  needs  of  a  comparatively 
simple  community,  homogeneous,  and  neither  too  numerous 
nor  with  wealth  very  unequally  distributed.  Its  chief  excel- 
lence lies  in  the  fact  that  it  is  the  most  perfect  government  of 
the  people  by  the  people  which  has  ever  been  devised  ;  and  its 
simplicity  is  its  most  striking  characteristic.  Though  admitting 
of  very  considerable  development,  and  far  more  elastic  and 
adaptable  to  circumstances  under  skilful  business  handling 
than  would  naturally  have  been  supposed,  town-meeting  govern- 
ment does  not,  any  more  than  other  forms  of  government,  ad- 
mit of  infinite  development,  nor  is  its  elasticity  without  limit. 
The  original  requirements  of  Quincy,  like  other  Massachusetts 
villages,  were  few  and  comparatively  simple  ;  but  during  the 
last  sixty  years  the  few  requirements  have  multiplied,  the 
simple  has  become  complex,  the  homogeneous  has  become 
heterogeneous.  Church  has  indeed  been  separated  from  state; 
but  in  place  of  the  one  function  of  which  the  town  was  thus 
relieved,  the  modern  municipality  has  found  itself  compelled 
to  assume  endless  other  functions.  The  schools  have  been 
multiplied  ;  and  so  have  the  branches  of  instruction  pursued 
in  them,  —  until  even  the  more  rudimentary  forms  of  education 
have  become  the  province  of  specialists.  The  highways,  in 
the  case  of  Quincy,  are  crushed  under  a  traffic  which  reduces 
the  firmest  known  pavement  to  powder.  The  care  of  the 
sick,  the  poor  and  the  insane  has  been  magnified  into  a 
science  and  reduced  to  a  system.  These,  the  ancient  and 
traditional  functions  of  the  town,  have  all,  through  the  nat- 
ural process  of  development,  passed,  in  the  larger  centres  of 
population,  beyond  the  handling  capacity  of  the  ordinary  offi- 
cial, and  of  necessity  devolved  upon  a  class  of  men  specially 
trained  to  deal  with  them.  Meanwhile,  other  and  new  needs 
have  made  themselves  felt.  The  public  peace  has  to  be  pro- 
vided for ;  scientific  provision  must  be  made  against  fire  ; 
streets  need  to  be  lighted,  questions  of  public  health  are  to 


26  THE   CENTENNIAL   MILESTONE. 

be  considered,  the  introduction  of  water  necessitates  drainage, 
the  old  burying-ground  develops  into  the  modern  cemetery, 
the  public  school  differentiates  and  is  supplemented  by  the 
public  library,  and  the  training-field  and  ancient  common, 
having  passed  away,  are  replaced  by  the  park  and  the  public 
garden.  The  performance  of  the  duties  necessarily  pertaining 
to  all  these  things,  calling  as  they  do  for  almost  infinite  special 
knowledge  and  a  complicated  financial  machinery,  was  imposed 
little  by  little  on  the  old  town  governments.  It  was  as  if  an 
old-fashioned  country  cart,  well  designed,  honestly  made  of  ex- 
cellent material,  altogether  good  in  its  day  and  for  what  was 
then  needed  of  it,  was  by  degrees  called  upon  to  do  the  work  of 
a  modern  railroad  train.  As  a  matter  of  course  the  cart  must 
break  down.  So  government  through  town-meeting  broke 
down  in  Quincy  in  1888,  just  as  nearly  seventy  years  before 
it  broke  down  in  Boston. 

Thus  the  problem  presented  itself  to  us,  and  its  solution  is 
not  a  matter  of  choice  or  of  pleasure,  but  of  stern  necessity : 
nor  do  I  think  it  would  be  stating  the  case  in  language  of 
undue  strength  to  say  that  this  problem  of  municipal  govern- 
ment is  the  present  skeleton  in  the  closet  of  the  American 
political  household.  Nevertheless,  in  the  situation,  however 
uncomfortable  or  disturbing  it  may  be,  there  is  one  feature  of 
great  encouragement.  Our  problem  may  be  difficult,  and  its 
solution  yet  remote ;  and  few  Americans  who  have  thought 
at  all  upon  the  subject  will  deny  that  it  is  difficult,  or  that  no 
great  degree  of  progress  towards  a  solution  has  yet  been 
made  :  but  at  least  in  our  case  the  way  to  a  solution  is  open 
and  obvious,  —  no  throttle-valve  chokes  it.  For  in  this  respect 
the  body  politic  bears  a  close  resemblance  to  material  things 
in  the  domain  of  physics;  and  men  of  science  say  that  if  an 
amount  of  water  enough  to  fill  a  tea-pot  only,  were  confined 
in  a  small  space,  with  no  outlet  of  escape,  and  were  there  sub- 
jected to  a  sufficient  degree  of  heat,  the  weight  of  the  universe 
would  not  suffice  to  hold  it  in.  It  would  find  or  make  a 
vent  ;  and  the  commotion  caused  by  it  in  so  doing  would  be 
in  exact  proportion  to  the  resistance  it  was  forced  to  overcome. 
On  this  point,  history  is  full  of  object-lessons,   even   though 


THE   CENTENNIAL   MILESTONE.  2/ 

mankind  is  slow  to  see  and  understand  them.  The  wars  of 
the  religious  Reformation  were  such  an  object-lesson.  The 
most  absolute  and  far-reaching  system  of  domination  which 
the  ingenuity  of  man,  working  on  custom,  superstition  and 
fear^  has  yet  devised,  sought  in  the  sixteenth  century  to  hold 
freedom  of  thought  in  strict  restraint.  The  new  force  had 
long  lain  inert,  or  expanded  but  slowly;  then  by  degrees  its 
presence  began  to  be  felt.  Thereupon  the  repressive  power 
in  turn  exerted  itself,  with  no  thought  of  a  vent,  until  at 
last,  through  the  lives  of  four  wretched  generations,  it  was 
as  if  an  earthquake  were  shaking  the  everlasting  hills,  and 
toppling  down  every  structure  raised  by  man.  It  was  the 
same  in  the  French  Revolution  of  the  last  century ;  it  is 
the  same  in  Russia  to-day.  In  other  words,  agitation,  rest- 
lessness, disorder  and  the  demand  for  change  are  in  the 
body  politic  merely  outward  indications  of  some  process  of 
internal  readjustment  at  the  time  going  on,  as  a  result  of 
which  the  existing  order  of  things  accommodates  itself  to 
new  conditions;  and  the  readjustment  is  sudden  or  gradual, 
easy  or  violent,  according  to  the  nature  of  the  new  force 
at  work,  and  the  repressive  influence  against  which  it  has 
to  assert  itself.  Nature  has  a  way  of  working  peculiar  to 
itself  :  it  is  not  apt  to  be  in  a  hurry,  but  it  is  sure  ;  and  in  its 
processes  it  pays  no  attention  to  the  convenience  of  either 
individuals  or  communities.  Consequently  those  internal  com- 
motions, which  in  fact  are  but  the  indications  of  a  healthy  and 
developing  community,  always  have  made  miserable,  and  ever 
will  make  miserable,  the  lives  of  the  well-to-do,  the  comfortable 
and  the  conservative.  They  are  doing  so  now  with  us  here,  as 
well  as  with  others  elsewhere. 

In  our  case,  too,  the  new  forces  at  work  are  unquestionably 
active  and  far-reaching, — -  not  impossibly  they  may  be  subver- 
sive; but  at  least  they  find  a  ready  vent,  and  hence  it  fol- 
lows that,  though  there  may  be  —  and,  indeed,  unquestionably 
has  been  —  a  temporary  deterioration,  no  necessity  exists 
for  violent  action,  since  there  is  no  desire  for  and  no  at- 
tempt at  forcible  repression.  Herein  much  is  gained.  Each 
thought,  each  need,  each  craving  or  new  impulse,  intellectual 


28  THE   CENTENNIAL   MILESTONE. 

or  material,  is  left  to  develop  in  its  own  way,  with  the  convic- 
tion on  the  part  of  all  that  trial  and  discussion  are  the  only 
tests  from  which  there  is  no  appeal.  The  twentieth  century 
has  thus  much  advanced  over  the  fifteenth;  and  America  to- 
day occupies  a  better  position  than  Russia  or  England,  as  they 
stand  there  holding  their  nihilistic  and  Irish  wolves  by  the 
ears.  Whether  we  personally  want  it  or  not,  new  light  has  got 
to  come:  but  there  are  various  kinds  of  light;  and  it  makes  all 
the  difference  in  the  world  whether  the  new  light  breaks  as  a 
quiet  and  gradual  dawn,  no  matter  how  obscured  and  stormy 
in  aspect,  or  whether  it  comes  from  the  lurid  glare  of  a 
rumbling  volcano. 

It  was  not  until  the  century  now  ended  was  drawing  near 
its  close  that  we  here  in  Quincy  fully  realized  that  the  change 
through  which  others  had  passed  was  immediately  impending 
over  us.  For  some  years,  as  we  watched  the  rapid  growth  of 
the  town  and  the  development  of  its  functions  of  government, 
an  uneasy  feeling  had,  it  is  true,  crept  abroad  that  things  could 
not  forever  go  on  in  what  we  felt  to  be  the  good  old  way.  We 
were  vaguely  conscious,  in  spite  of  ourselves,  of  the  presence 
of  that  skeleton  in  the  closet.  But  never  had  government 
through  town-meeting  worked  better  or  brought  about  more 
satisfactory  results,  material  and  financial,  than  since  1870;  and 
we,  not  unwisely,  I  think,  deferred  the  impending  issue  until, 
in  1888,  it  was  forced  upon  us  by  the  unmistakable  progress 
of  events.  Then  the  problem,  of  which  we  had  heard  so  much 
elsewhere,  confronted  us  ;  and,  girding  ourselves  for  our  work, 
we  undertook  to  try  our  hand  at  a  solution.  We  are,  of  course, 
not  yet  far  enough  advanced  in  the  path  of  practical  results 
to  speak  with  any  confidence  of  the  outcome  of  our  effort,  but 
the  effort  was  at  least  an  honest,  an  intelligent  and  a  credi- 
table one;  as  such,  moreover,  it  has  attracted  a  certain  degree 
of  interest  from  without.  Of  that  effort,  its  significance,  its 
merits  and  its  shortcomings,  I  now  propose  to  say  something. 
Having  looked  back  over  the  road  by  which  we  reached  the 
spot  where  we  are,  and  on  which  our  centennial  milestone  will 
stand,  it  is  time  once  more  to  peer  forward  over  the  beginning 
of  the  next  stage  in  our  journey. 


THE   CENTENNIAL   MILESTONE.  29 

An  experience,  now  no  longer  short  and  still  fast  increasing, 
seems  to  indicate  that  one  cause  of  the  trouble  experienced  in 
our  city  governments  is  that  they  have  from  the  beginning 
been  organized  on  a  defective  model,  —  that  they  followed  an 
analogy  which  was  not  applicable,  —  the  model  of  the  consti- 
tutions of  the  State  and  of  the  United  States.  The  municipal 
government  was  assumed  to  be  analogous  to  the  political  gov- 
ernment. In  fact  it  was  and  is  nothing  of  the  sort:  the  state 
is  a  political  entity  ;  the  municipality,  a  mere  business  organ- 
ization. Accordingly,  it  is  no  part  of  the  proper  function  of 
those  handling  municipal  affairs  to  consider  philosophical 
principles  of  state-craft.  They  are,  on  the  contrary,  persons 
selected  by  the  constituencies  to  do  the  work  intrusted  to 
them,  because  the  constituent  masses  have  grown  so  large  that 
they  can  no  longer  meet  in  one  body  to  do  that  work  them- 
selves. The  function  of  the  municipal  officer  is,  therefore,  to 
administer  the  affairs  of  a  local  community  in  an  intelligent 
and  business-like  way.  Nevertheless,  in  Massachusetts  the 
municipal  governments  have  always  been  traditionally  framed 
with  the  cumbrous  machinery  of  the  larger  political  bodies. 
They  have,  as  matter  of  course,  had  their  boards  of  aldermen, 
representing  the  senate,  and  their  common  councils,  represent- 
ing the  more  popular  branch  of  the  Legislature,  instead  of  the 
simple  executive  and  board  of  directors  of  innumerable  other 
business  organizations.  Indeed,  it  seems  almost  to  have  been 
assumed  as  a  maxim  by  the  framers  of  the  city  charters  that 
municipal  machinery  would  work  more  efficiently  in  proportion 
to  its  clumsiness  and  intricacy.  Again,  the  functions  of  the 
several  departments  of  the  ordinary  city  government  have,  in 
the  course  of  time,  become  hopelessly  confused.  Responsi- 
bility has  ceased  to  exist;  for  the  legislative  has  by  degrees 
encroached  on  the  executive  until,  in  the  greater  number  of 
cities,  the  mayor  is  reduced  to  a  mere  cipher,  while  certain 
irresponsible  combinations  in  the  legislative  chambers  and 
city  halls,  generally  known  as  "  rings,"  really  control  the  ad- 
ministration of  affairs.  Almost  of  necessity,  the  executive 
functions  have  more  and  more  fallen  into  the  hands  of  com- 
missions and  boards,  as  the  special  requirements  for  the  suc- 

5 


30  THE   CENTENNIAL   MILESTONE. 

cessful  management  of  streets,  sewers,  lighting,  police,  etc., 
grow  in  importance.  These  boards,  if  not  irresponsible,  are 
as  a  rule  and  under  existing  city  organizations  not  responsible 
to  the  chief  executive. 

Public  attention  had  for  years  been  forcibly  called  to  these 
gathering  difficulties  by  the  occurrence  of  scandals  of  ever- 
increasing  notoriety,  more  and  more  discussed,  which  those 
who  drew  up  our  Quincy  charter  bore  freshly  in  mind.  Ac- 
cordingly, that  charter,  framed  in  consultation  with  individ- 
uals both  within  and  without  the  State  who  had  made  a  special 
study  of  the  subject,  was  based  on  correct  political  theories  in 
one  respect  at  least,  —  in  so  far  as  was  practicable,  it  was  not 
a  creation,  but  an  outgrowth.  In  this  matter,  the  principle  at 
the  base  of  all  successful  constitutional  government  was  care- 
fully regarded, —  the  fundamental  principle  that  "everything 
which  has  power  to  win  the  obedience  and  respect  of  men  must 
have  its  roots  deep  in  the  past,  and  that  the  more  slowly  every 
institution  has  grown,  so  much  the  more  enduring  it  is  likely 
to  prove."  Changing,  therefore,  in  the  least  degree  possible, 
the  system  to  which  the  community  had  long  been  accustomed, 
those  who  framed  our  Quincy  charter  proposed  simply  to  do 
away  with  the  old  board  of  selectmen  as  an  executive  body, 
and  with  the  town-meeting  as  a  legislative  body,  and  to  substi- 
tute for  them  respectively  a  reponsible  single  executive,  and  a 
council  much  in  the  nature  of  a  board  of  corporation  directors. 
The  framers  of  the  charter  in  distributing  the  powers  and 
functions  of  the  proposed  government  followed,  and  followed 
correctly,  the  maxim  that  "  Deliberation  is  the  work  of  many. 
Execution  is  the  work  of  one ;  "  and  while  to  the  council  of 
Quincy  under  its  charter  all  proper  deliberative  and  directive 
liberty  was  allotted,  the  Mayor  of  Quincy  was  avowedly  in- 
tended to  be  clothed  with  a  larger  and  more  arbitrary  power 
within  his  department  than  had  ever  in  the  United  States  been 
confided  to  the  executive  head  of  any  organization  classed  as 
political.^ 

Such  was  and  is  the  Quincy  charter,  —  our  attempt  at  a  solu- 
tion of  the  great  problem  now  vexing  the  nation.  It  was  a  new 
1  See  Appendix  E,  p.  49. 


THE   CENTENNIAL   MILESTONE.  3  I 

departure,  —  a  departure  carefully  prepared,  in  full  sympathy 
with  the  current  political  theories  of  the  day;  and  then  under- 
standingly  entered  upon.  Whether  it  will  prove  a  successful 
departure,  —  a  veritable  and  valuable  contribution  to  political 
science,  —  remains  to  be  seen;  but  whether  in  the  result  it 
does  or  does  not  so  prove,  it  was  and  is,  as  I  have  said,  none 
the  less  an  honest,  an  intelligent  and  a  well-considered  attempt 
at  the  solution  of  the  problem. 

And  now,  having  said  this  much,  let  us  look  at  the  thing  from 
another  point  of  view  ;  for  we  may  rest  assured  that,  before  any 
final  result  is  reached,  —  at  least  if  that  result  is  to  be  of  a  satis- 
factory and  not  of  a  chaotic  character,  —  this  thing  has  got  to 
be  studied  as  well  as  looked  at  from  every  conceivable  point  of 
view.  From  another  point  of  view  may  it  not  be  that  in  the 
Quincy  charter  the  fatal  mistake  was  made  of  endeavoring  to 
devise  a  governmental  machinery  which  should  do  the  work  the 
citizen  only  can  do  with  success  ?  Of  late  the  effort  has  un- 
questionably been,  through  some  ingenious  and  careful  readjust- 
ment of  the  parts  of  government  and  their  relations  to  the 
community  and  each  other,  to  invent  a  mere  machine,  which, 
once  set  in  motion,  will  work  of  itself, —  a  kind  of  nickel-in-the- 
slot  political  arrangement,  under  which  the  citizen  will  be  saved 
the  trouble  of  doing  anything,  except  periodically  dropping  an 
improved  ballot  into  a  patented  ballot-box. 

More  than  a  century  and  a  half  ago  an  English  poet,  a 
good  deal  more  read  formerly  than  now,  epigrammatically 
exclaimed  — 

"  For  forms  of  government  let  fools  contest : 
That  which  is  best  administered  is  best." 

While  this  certainly  is  not  now,  and  never  was,  wholly  true, 
yet  there  is  truth  in  it,  —  a  degree  of  truth  of  which  the  charter 
theorists  need  to  be  reminded  now  that  they  are  so  plainly  tend- 
ing to  the  opposite  theory,  that,  in  municipal  governments  at 
any  rate,  everything  is  in  the  form,  the  proper  distribution 
of  functions  and  concentration  of  responsibility  —  that,  in 
short,  if  we  are  only  patient  and  ingenious  enough  in  device,  a 
charter  can  in  time  be  produced  which,  once  set  in  motion,  will 


32  THE   CENTENNIAL   MILESTONE. 

grind  out  a  correct  and  satisfactory  administration  of  municipal 
affairs.  May  it  not  be  that,  after  all,  the  Quincy  charter  was  to 
some  extent  an  attempt  of  this  sort,  —  an  attempt  to  secure 
through  mechanical  means  that  which  a  disinterested  and 
widely  diffused  public  spirit  and  co-operative  action  only  ever 
have  brought  about  yet,  or  probably  ever  will  bring  about 
hereafter  ? 

If  this  is  so,  it  needs  no  prophet's  eye  to  foresee  that  our 
Quincy  charter  is,  as  the  solution  of  a  difficult  problem,  not  des- 
tined to  prove  a  success.  When  Mr.  Bryce,  in  the  extracts  from 
his  work  already  quoted,  said  that,  as  respects  American  muni- 
cipal affairs,  "  we  find  able  citizens  absorbed  in  their  private 
business,  cultivated  citizens  unusually  sensitive  to  the  vulgari- 
ties of  practical  politics,  and  both  sets  therefore  specially  un- 
wilhng  to  sacrifice  their  time  and  tastes  and  comforts  in  the 
struggle"  of  civic  administration,  —  when  Mr.  Bryce  wrote 
this,  he  touched  with  the  point  of  his  pen  the  true  seat  of 
trouble.  More  than  that,  he  indicated  the  only  possible  remedy 
for  it. 

It  is  good  to  frame  charters  and  constitutions  ;  it  is  well  to 
devise  ingenious  political  expedients  ;  it  is  refreshing  to  ob- 
serve the  working  of  nicely  balanced  paper  adjustments  :  —  but, 
by  themselves  and  of  themselves,  it  is  most  improbable  that  in 
the  present  or  any  other  respect  these  will  ever  work  out  the 
political  salvation  of  a  community  which  depends  upon  them. 
The  Quincy  charter,  I  will  also  add,  however  excellent  it  may 
be  in  theory,  will  in  the  coming  years  not  work  out  the  muni- 
cipal salvation  of  Quincy.  Of  that  much  at  least  we  can  even 
now  feel  assured.  Something  else  is  necessary;  and  that  some- 
thing is  men,  —  and,  moreover,  the  very  best  men  this  or  any 
other  town  or  city  now  can  or  ever  will  supply.  The  solution, 
and  the  only  solution,  of  the  problem  which  torments  us  may 
be  as  easy  to  point  out  as  it  is  difficult  to  secure.  In  looking 
for  it,  also,  it  may  not  be  necessary  to  go  very  far  afield. 

I  venture  to  suggest,  also,  that  in  the  matter  of  municipal  rule 
and  administration  we  might  to-day  derive  useful  hints  from  the 
experience  in  another  field  of  France  and  Italy,  and  yet  more  of 
Germany.     Those  nations  have  their  skeletons  in  the  closet,  — 


THE   CENTENNIAL   MILESTONE.  33 

their  problems  which  must  be  solved,  —  as  we  have  ours.  Ade- 
quate security  against  internal  disorder  or  foreign  aggression  is 
their  problem.  Their  solution  of  it  is  cornpulsory  military  ser- 
vice. Our  problem  is  good  municipal  government.  Might  not 
its  solution  be  found  in  a  species  of  compulsory  municipal  ser- 
vice ?  The  suggestion  of  such  a  thing  may  at  first  seem  futile 
and  almost  foolish  ;  yet,  perhaps,  the  more  it  is  considered,  the 
less  idle  will  it  appear.  In  republican  America,  no  less  than  de- 
spotic Russia,  the  community  has,  so  far  as  the  individual  citizen 
is  concerned,  —  no  matter  who  that  citizen  maybe,  or  what  his 
vocation,  or  what  his  estate,  —  the  community  has  over  him  a 
certain  right  of  eminent  domain  ;  and  a  right  which  within  rea- 
sonable limits  it  should  exercise.  To  say  this  is  merely  to 
assert,  what  no  one  will  deny,  that  every  citizen  is  towards  the 
government  which  protects  him  under  obligations  of  duty  a 
quittance  for  which  is  not  included  in  the  receipt  of  the  tax- 
collector.  If  then  the  public  exigency  demands,  and  the  de- 
mand can  in  no  other  way  be  met,  just  as  the  German  govern- 
ment puts  its  hand  on  every  German,  —  high-born  or  low-born, 
rich  or  poor,  —  and  puts  him  for  a  term  of  years  into  the  ranks 
of  its  army,  exacting  from  him  this  forced  service  on  public  ac- 
count, —  so,  under  our  institutions  and  in  the  spirit  of  them,  you 
here  in  Quincy,  and  by  the  same  principle  those  there  in  Bos- 
ton and  in  New  York  and  in  San  Francisco,  have  a  right  to 
lay  hands  on  any  citizen  of  your  or  their  municipality,  be  he 
rich  or  poor,  prominent  or  obscure,  educated  or  ignorant,  and 
exact  of  him  a  term  of  municipal  service,  if  you  see  fit  so  to 
do;  and  moreover,  just  as  in  Germany  a  physical  disability  or 
papers  of  discharge  alone  give  exemption  from  military  duty, 
so  here,  if  a  proper  system  prevailed,  only  a  similar  disability 
or  a  reasonable  term  of  duty  performed,  ought  to  secure  ex- 
emption from  municipal  service.  Not  only  under  a  republican 
system  of  government  is  this,  I  repeat,  the  right  of  the  commu- 
nity, but  more  than  that,  it  is  its  duty  to  exercise  the  right,  and 
to  enforce  its  exercise  by  all  necessary  means. 

The  enunciation  of  such  a  doctrine  of  public  right  and  pri- 
vate duty  will,  I  know,  sound  strange  now,  and  by  most  be 
regarded  as  theoretic.     I  greatly  fear,  also,  that  as  a  practical 


34  THE   CENTENNIAL   MILESTONE. 

remedy  it  is  out  of  the  question,  being  opposed  to  that  ten- 
dency or  drift  of  public  opinion  and  unwritten  law  of  usage 
than  which  nothing  is  more  difficult  to  reverse  or  overcome. 
If  such  is  the  case,  —  if  municipal  service  cannot  be  put  on 
the  same  plane  as  jury  duty,  —  it  remains  only  to  accept  the 
situation,  and  to  go  on  treating  that  service  in  the  future  as 
we  have  treated  it  in  the  more  recent  past,  as  a  voluntary  con- 
tribution to  be  made  by  those  of  more  public  spirit,  and  with- 
held by  those  of  less.  But  if  such  is  indeed  the  case,  let  no 
one  hug  himself  in  the  pleasing  delusion  that  the  results  of 
American  municipal  government  in  the  future  will  be  any 
more  satisfactory  than  they  have  been  heretofore.  Most  as- 
suredly they  will  not,  for  it  will  then  be  evident  that  the  root 
of  the  trouble  is  in  the  decay  of  public  spirit ;  and  neither 
charters  nor  systems  of  checks  and  balances,  no  matter  how 
intricate  or  how  cunningly  devised,  ever  were  or  ever  will  be 
an  adequate  substitute  for  public  spirit.  On  the  contrary, 
those  devices  become  then  a  delusion  and  a  snare. 

Such  a  theory  of  public  right  and  private  duty  may  to  some 
also  sound  Utopian  rather  than  merely  theoretic.  To  such, 
if  such  there  be,  I  will  merely  say :  It  was  not  always  so  !  — 
and  in  proof  thereof,  I  with  all  confidence  appeal  to  the  record. 
Listen,  and  you  will  learn,  very  possibly  to  your  surprise,  that 
what  you  now  dismiss  as  Utopian, — that  very  compulsory 
municipal  service,  irrespective  of  every  social  distinction,  which 
I  have  suggested,  not  only  formerly  prevailed  here  in  Ouincy, 
but  was  enforced  by  a  money  penalty  as  well  as  by  public 
opinion.  And  first,  I  call  as  a  witness  one  who,  it  will  be 
remembered,  before  being  President  of  the  United  States, 
served  two  successive  years  as  a  selectman  of  Braintree. 
John  Adams  graduated  at  Harvard  College  in  1755,  and  six 
years  later,  in  1761,  was  a  young  lawyer  just  beginning  prac- 
tice in  his  native  town.  Here  is  his  experience,  recounted  by 
himself,  of  compulsory  municipal  service  as  then  practised : 

"  In  March  [of  that  year],  when  I  had  no  suspicion,  I  heard  my 
name  pronounced  [at  town-meeting]  in  a  nomination  of  surveyors 
of  highways.  I  was  very  wroth,  because  I  knew  no  better,  but  said 
nothing.     My  friend  Dr.  Savil  came  to  me  and  told  me  that  he  had 


THE   CENTENNIAL   MILESTONE.  35 

nominated  me  to  prevent  me  from  being  nominated  as  a  constable. 
'  For,'  said  the  doctor,  '  they  make  it  a  rule  to  compel  every  man  to 
serve  either  as  constable  or  surveyor,  or  to  pay  a  fine.'  I  said  they 
might  as  well  have  chosen  any  boy  in  school,  for  I  knew  nothing  of 
the  business  ;  but  since  they  had  chosen  me  at  a  venture,  I  would 
accept  it  in  the  same  manner,  and  find  out  my  duty  as  I  could." 

Now  for  other  cases  of  the  enforcement  of  this  rule  of  com- 
pulsory municipal  service.  Your  ancient  records  are  full  of 
them,  nor  were  any  exemptions  allowed.  For  instance,  in 
1734  Josiah  Quincy,  then  a  young  man  of  twenty-five,  was 
elected  constable,  and  the  town  constable  in  those  days  col- 
lected the  town  taxes,  —  a  duty  even  more  odious  then  than 
now,  for  to  it  a  financial  liability  for  the  entire  levy  attached 
by  law :  to  this  office  of  constable  the  Josiah  Quincy  of  that 
day  was  chosen  in  the  Braintree  town-meeting  of  1734;  and 
the  record  goes  on,  "  Mr.  Josiah  Quincy  refused  to  serve,  and 
paid  his  fine  down,  being  five  pounds."  So  John  Borland, 
belonging  to  one  of  the  few  wealthy  families  in  the  town,  a 
member  of  the  Church  of  England  society,  and  subsequently 
a  Tory,  was  chosen  constable  in  1756,  though  then  excused 
from  serving;  but  in  1757  he  was  chosen  again,  and  appears 
to  have  served.  In  1774  General  Joseph  Palmer,  being  then 
fifty-eight,  a  man  of  fortune  and  a  deacon,  was  duly  chosen 
constable  at  the  annual  March  meeting,  over  which  he  was  at 
the  time  presiding  as  moderator;  but  he  "  refused  serving,  as 
incompatible  with  his  church  ofifice."  In  1728,  Moses  Belcher 
was  chosen;  and  he  declaring  non-acceptance,  William  Fields 
was  next  chosen  ;  Fields  also  declaring  his  non-acceptance, 
"John  Adams,  being  by  a  majority  of  votes  chosen,  he  de- 
clared his  acceptance."  In  1735  no  less  than  twenty-five 
pounds  were  paid  in  as  fines  for  non-acceptance  ;  and  those 
fines  were  looked  upon  as  so  considerable  a  source  of  revenue 
that  in  1730  it  had  been  voted  that  the  money  accruing  on  this 
account  should  be  for  the  benefit,  not  of  the  town  as  a  whole, 
but  of  the  particular  precincts  in  which  the  individuals  who 
paid  it  might  live.  Col.  John  Quincy's  only  son,  Norton, 
graduated  in  1756,  and  two  years  later,  at  the  town-meeting 
of  September  11,  he  was  chosen  constable.     Another  meeting 


3^  THE   CENTENNIAL   MILESTONE. 

was  held  a  week  afterwards.  Colonel  Quincy  was  then  a  man 
of  nearly  seventy,  and  for  almost  fifty  years  he  had  been  the 
most  prominent  personage  in  the  town.  He  was  looked  up  to 
with  that  respect  which,  in  the  popular  mind,  always  accom- 
panies advancing  years  associated  with  high  personal  charac- 
ter and  the  long  holding  of  public  office.  The  old  man  seems 
to  have  thought  the  choice  of  his  son  as  town  constable  an  act 
derogatory  to  himself;  so  he  went  into  the  second  meeting, 
and,  as  the  record  says,  "desired  his  son  might  be  excused 
from  serving  constable."  Among  those  to  whom  this  request 
was  addressed  there  could  not  have  been  many  who  remem- 
bered a  time  when  the  man  who  made  it  had  not,  as  a  matter 
of  course,  presided  at  town-meetings.  They  were  not  wanting 
in  deference  to  years  and  standing ;  and  if  they  would  defer  to 
any  one,  they  would  surely  defer  to  him  after  whom  the  North 
Precinct  as  an  independent  town  was  subsequently  named. 
But,  clearly,  they  thought  that  Colonel  Quincy  was  now  de- 
manding for  himself  and  his  an  exemption  from  public  service 
which  amounted  to  little  less  than  a  denial  of  equality.  Such 
an  assumption  of  superiority  was  inconsistent  with  the  spirit 
of  town  government.  And  so,  the  record  proceeds,  "  after 
reasons  offered,"  the  request  to  be  excused  was  "passed  in 
the  negative,"  and  the  town  treasurer  was  directed  "  to  call  on 
said  Norton  Quincy  for  his  fine."  Apparently  the  old  man 
felt  this  slight,  as  he  regarded  it,  deeply  ;  for  his  name  does 
not  appear  again  in  the  town  records,  though  it  was  nine 
years  yet  before  he  died.  But  young  Nort6n  Quincy  accepted 
the  rebuke  in  the  true  spirit.  He  paid  his  fine,  and  the  next 
year,  when  the  town  again  chose  him  constable,  he  quietly 
accepted  the  office  and  performed  its  duties.  Later  he  was 
chosen  selectman,  serving  as  such  for  many  years  during  the 
revolutionary  period. 

So  stands  the  record  on  the  point  that  in  Quincy  here  there 
is  nothing  novel  in  the  idea  of  compulsory  municipal  service, 
or  in  its  practical  enforcement.  In  former  days  a  man  could 
not  be  called  upon  to  serve  forever  as  town-constable,  nor 
could  he  properly  be  called  upon  to  serve  perpetually  now  as 
a  mayor  or  as  member  of  your  city  council ;   but  he  was  then 


THE   CENTENNIAL   MILESTONE.  37 

compelled  to  serve  his  reasonable  term  of  municipal  duty  in 
the  positions  to  which  his  fellow-townsmen  called  him,  and 
now  he  should  be  compelled  to  do  the  same.  Nor  wealth  nor 
indolence  nor  private  occupation  sufficed  to  secure  exemp- 
tion then  ;  nor  should  they  suffice  to  secure  it  now. 

I  have  also  said  that  the  American  municipahty  is  entitled 
to  the  service  of  its  best  men.  But  who  are  your  "  best  men  "  .? 
—  for,  in  politics,  this  phrase  sometimes  excites  a  sneer,  as 
though  in  that  field  the  talking  of  "  best  men  "  seemed  to  con- 
tain an  implied  and  undemocratic  assertion  that  for  civic 
purposes  all  men  are  not  equal.  By  "  best  men,"  therefore, 
are  meant  those  who  in  the  ordinary  walks  of  life  —  on  the 
street,  in  the  court-room,  the  sick-chamber  and  the  market- 
place—  are  recognized  as  most  successful  in  their  callings. 
If  you  are  going  to  organize  a  bank  or  a  manufacturing  or  a 
railroad  company,  you  do  not  select  from  among  its  stock- 
holders a  list  of  directors  largely  composed  of  those  who  have 
notoriously  failed  in  whatever  else  they  have  undertaken,  or 
who  are  otherwise  discredited.  You  carefully  select,  on  the 
contrary,  men  known  to  have  been  shrewdest  and  most  suc- 
cessful in  the  management  of  their  own  affairs,  and  who  stand 
highest  in  the  estimate  of  the  stockholders.  Has  the  same 
practice  been  followed  as  a  rule  in  the  make-up  of  the  boards 
of  aldermen  and  common  councils  of  our  cities  ?  Yet  in  what 
way,  so  far  as  good  business  management  is  concerned,  does  a 
public  corporation  differ  from  a  private  corporation  ?  ^  By  the 
"  best  men  "  of  a  municipality,  therefore,  is  meant  those  who 
are  recognized  and  looked  to  as  best  and  most  successful  in 
the  ordinary  walks  of  life:  and  it  is  to  a  reasonable  share  ot 
the  services  of  these  that,  I  insist,  every  municipality  is  entitled 
as  of  right ;  and,  moreover,  that  its  claim  should  he  enforced, 
where  public  opinion  does  not  suffice,  by  such  other  means, 
whether  of  obloquy  or  pecuniary  loss,  as  might  be  found 
necessary  to  bring  about  the  desired  result. 

Herein,  I  submit,  might  be  found  one  factor,  and  a  most  im- 
portant factor,  in  the  solution  of  our  problem.  But  the  sug- 
gestion of  it  will  be  met  with  the  objection  that,  through  the 

1  See  Appendix  F,  p.  5S. 
G 


38  THE   CENTENNIAL   MILESTONE. 

working  of  the  political  machinery  now  in  use,  and  to  which 
as  a  community  we  are  thoroughly  accustomed,  the  best  men 
are  not  selected  for  office.  The  machine,  indeed,  is  not  worked 
to  that  end.  Far  from  it ;  the  professionals  who  make  a  busi- 
ness of  manipulating  the  caucus  are  to  the  modern  citizen, 
honestly  minded  but  engrossed  in  his  private  affairs,  very 
much  what  armed  mercenaries  were  to  the  town  mob  in  old 
feudal  days,  —  nine  times  out  of  ten  they  are  absolute  masters 
of  the  situation.  They  nominate  whom  they  please  ;  and,  in 
municipal  office,  they  have  no  use  whatever  for  the  commu- 
nity's "best  men." 

There  is  force,  too,  and  a  great  deal  of  force,  in  this  practical 
view  of  the  subject.  It  is  true — and  for  us  very  sadly  true 
—  that  the  whole  underlying  political  machinery  now  in  com- 
mon use  in  American  cities  (and  in  Quincy,  it  may  fairly  be 
presumed,  like  the  rest)  is  admirably  adapted — as  admira- 
bly adapted  as  if  it  were  so  designed  —  to  put  control  securely 
in  the  hands  of  the  professionals.  The  caucus  system  supple- 
ments the  ward  system.  To  be  in  public  life  in  America,  — 
whether  in  the  National  Congress  or  the  city  government,  —  a 
man  must  be  a  member  of  the  political  majority  in  the  locality 
in  which  he  chances  to  live.  A  political  system  better  adapted 
to  throwing  control  into  the  hands  of  those  who  will  use  it  for 
ulterior  and  selfish  ends,  and  for  keeping  the  "  best  men  "  out 
of  the  field  of  public  usefulness,  could  not  be  devised :  and  so 
it  is  against  this  part  of  the  existing  political  machinery,  I 
submit,  that  the  charter-makers  and  reformers  should  now  be 
directing  their  efforts,  rather  than  in  the  direction  of  more 
ingenious  contrivances  for  the  division  of  functions  and  the 
concentration  of  responsibility.  The  difficulty  is  in  the  basis 
of  representation.  We  reach  our  results  to-day  by  the  process 
of  counting  noses, /r^  and  con,  within  the  pales  of  certain  geo- 
graphical ring-fences  known  as  district  and  ward  lines  ! 

The  puzzle,  therefore,  the  charter-reformer  has  to  work  out, 
if  he  is  going  to  get  down  to  the  root  of  the  matter,  is  some 
practical  system  which  shall  secure  the  utmost  political  free 
play  to  the  individual  citizen,  and  the  representation  of  minor- 
ities in  municipal  affairs  ;  having  done  this,  —  having  thus  set 


THE   CENTENNIAL   MILESTONE.  39 

individuals  free  and  made  minorities  potent,  —  it  will  be  for 
those  composing  the  minorities  to  put  their  hands,  as  of  old, 
on  the  shoulders  of  the  "  best  men,"  and  exact  of  them  com- 
pulsory municipal  service,  those  civic  tours  of  public  duty. 

On  this  problem  the  past  throws  no  light.  You  may  search 
with  a  conveyancer's  care  the  pages  of  the  Braintree  records, 
or  your  own  record-books  of  Quincy,  but  you  will  find  nothing 
in  them  to  aid  you.  The  environments  are  all  new;  the 
adjustment  to  those  environments  must  be  equally  new  :  but 
you  will  be  uncomfortable  all  the  same, — you  will  toss  about 
like  Dante's  "  sick  man  who  cannot  find  rest  upon  his  bed," 
—  until  that  adjustment  is  effected,  and  correctly  effected. 
It  may,  unquestionably  it  does,  seem  strange  that  in  a  matter 
of  such  moment  the  precedents  to  guide  us  should  be  so 
few,  —  that  no  finger-posts  exist  along  the  road  we  must 
travel.  Indeed,  were  it  not  plainly  so,  it  would  be  thought  in- 
credible that,  after  nearly  three  centuries  of  active  experience, 
the  English-speaking  race  should  in  such  a  matter  as  local 
municipal  government  cling  to  a  system  which  leaves  it  to  arbi- 
trary geographical  lines  to  supply  the  basis  of  representation, 
instead  of  seeking  it  in  a  common  purpose  existing  among 
bodies  of  citizens.  It  is  not  easy  to  conceive  of  anything 
more  illogical  and  crude,  or,  it  may  be  added,  more  oppressive. 
But  the  absence  of  precedent  in  no  way  affects  the  situation. 
The  situation  is  bad  :  nor  will  the  trouble  be  settled  until  it  is 
settled  right.  We  are  now  represented  by  men  because  they 
live  in  the  next  street  to  us,  not  because  they  and  we,  think- 
ing alike  on  municipal  matters,  want  to  act  together.  It  would 
surely  require  no  great  degree  of  ingenuity  to  devise  a  local 
municipal  system  under  which  it  would  be  practicable  for 
a  scattered  constituency  —  no  longer  imprisoned  within  ward 
lines  so  that  those  composing  it  may  the  more  conveniently 
be  throttled  by  ward  politicians  —  so  to  concentrate  itself  as  to 
escape  complete  suppression.  It  would  not  be  profitable  for 
me  to  discuss  this  matter  further,  for  nothing  which  could  be 
uttered  here  and  now  will  perceptibly  affect  results.  These 
things  work  themselves  out  by  a  law  of  their  own  ;  and  being 
impatient  or  scolding  at  the  slow  course  of   events  is  of  no 


40  THE   CENTENNIAL   MILESTONE. 

earthly  use.  If  there  is  anything  good  or  practicable  in  what 
has  here  been  suggested,  it  will  come  under  the  pressure  of 
necessity,  and  all  in  good  time.  Assured  of  this,  we  can 
afford  to  withdraw  our  gaze  from  the  lengthening,  onward 
road  before  us,  with  confident  faith  that  just  as  the  eighteenth 
century  saw  with  us  a  system  of  compulsory  municipal  service 
in  accepted  and  active  operation,  so  the  twentieth  century  will 
devise  for  us  —  if  such  a  thing  is  really  worth  devising  —  some 
practical  method  of  minority  municipal  representation  which 
shall  restore  that  system  in  a  shape  adapted  to  existing  condi- 
tions, by  utilizing  to  the  utmost  those  saving  forces  of  individ- 
uality in  the  citizen  which  are  now  ignorantly  wasted,  where 
not  systematically  suppressed. 

Not  much  remains  to  be  said.  Such  as  it  is,  the  milestone 
is  planted,  and  in  a  few  hours  more  those  composing  our 
Quincy  column  of  to-day — men  and  women,  young  and  old, 
coming  together  from  hall  and  street  and  park  — will  take  up 
their  burdens  and  again  resume  the  line  of  march.  The  ban- 
ners may  be  rolled  up  and  the  mottoes  put  away  ;  for  an 
hundred  years  must  pass  before  those  who  are  to  succeed  us 
will  stop  again  to  rest  for  a  time  and  look  back  over  a  like  vista. 
It  is  not  profitable  to  attempt  to  divine  the  course  of  future 
events,  for  the  unexpected  is  apt  to  occur :  but,  as  our  Quincy 
column  winds  its  slow  length  along  the  dusty  road  or  through 
the  pastures  new,  it  may  at  least  be  given  us  to  hope  that 
the  Providence  which  watched  over  the  fathers  will  not  hide 
its  countenance  from  the  children. 

"  Lead,  Kindly  Light,  amid  th'  encircling  gloom, 
Lead  Thou  us  on ; 
The  night  is  dark,  and  we  are  far  from  home, 
Lead  Thou  us  on. 


"  So  long  Thy  power  hath  blessed  us,  sure  it  still 
Will  lead  us  on, 
O'er  moor  and  fen,  o'er  crag  and  torrent,  till 
The  night  is  gone." 


OLD    PLYMOUTH    ROAD, 
Twelfth  Milestone. 


APPENDIX. 


A. 

HTHE  lack  of  appreciation  of  the  ever-growing  historical  interest 
which  attaches  to  monuments  and  local  nomenclature  has 
already  led  to  the  destruction  of  much  which  lends  individuality  to 
Quincy,  as  to  other  ancient  towns.  It  is  not  easy  to  say  whether 
the  utilitarian  stone-mason  and  surveyor  of  highways,  or  the  pro- 
gressive land-speculator,  has,  in  this  respect,  the  heavier  load  of 
responsibility  to  carry.  Good  reasons  can  be  urged  against  the 
preservation  of  ancient  buildings,  except  in  very  exceptional  cases. 
In  course  of  time  they  become  unfit  for  modern  use,  and,  indeed, 
on  sanitary  grounds,  for  human  habitation ;  while  altogether  too 
frequently  they  stand  in  the  way  of  changes  and  needed  improve- 
ments :  but  these  arguments  do  not  apply  to  old-time  memorials  and 
monuments,  or  to  traditional  nomenclature.  These  are  apt  to  be 
interesting ;  and  they  are  never  in  the  way. 

Take  for  instance  the  provincial  milestones  on  the  road  from 
Boston  to  Plymouth.  Chief-Justice  Paul  Dudley,  early  in  the  last 
century,  placed  a  line  of  these  through  Roxbury  to  the  Dorchester 
line,  marking  them  with  his  initials,  "P.  D."  Another  line,  mark- 
ing "  The  lower  way  "  from  Stoughton's  Mill,  or  Milton  Lower  Falls, 
to  Boston,  was  planted  by  Governor  Belcher  about  1734  {History  of 
Milt07i,  pp.  1 1 2-1 13).  The  seventh  and  eighth  stones,  bearing  respec- 
tively the  dates  1722  and  1723,  but  without  initials,  are  still  standing 
on  the  west  and  south  roadside  in  Milton.  The  ninth,  the  first  of 
the  series  in  Quincy,  is  referred  to  in  the  text,  and  is  reproduced  in 
the  frontispiece  to  this  Address.  At  least  one  attempt  has  been 
made  to  remove  and  "utihze"  this  stone  for  some  such  purpose  as 
repairing  a  wall  or  covering  a  drain  ;  but  the  emphatic  objection  of 
members  of  the  Newcomb  family,  whose  house  stood  opposite  to  it. 


42  THE   CENTENNIAL   MILESTONE. 

prevented,  in  this  case,  an  act  of  stupid  and  ignorant  desecration. 
The  tenth  stone  —  an  historical  landmark  in  Old  Braintree  and 
Quincy  —  stood  in  its  proper  place  by  the  roadside  in  the  centre 
of  the  town,  until  one  day,  some  twenty  years  ago,  a  stone-mason, 
building  one  of  those  fortifications  known  as  ornamental  stone  walls 
in  front  of  the  house  of  the  late  Lemuel  Brackett,  seized  upon  it, 
tore  it  up  and  cut  it  to  pieces,  and  inserted  a  portion  of  it  in  the 
wretched  wall  he  was  constructing.  The  portion  thus  preserved  bears 
the  initial  letter,  "  B,"  and  the  distance  figures  (lo)  from  Boston; 
the  rest  of  the  stone  is  gone.  The  eleventh  milestone  stood  close  to 
the  so-called  Adams  houses  at  the  foot  of  Penn's  Hill.  Less  fortu- 
nate than  the  tenth,  this  milestone  wholly  disappeared  years  ago, 
and  no  trace  of  it  remains.  It  was  probably  taken  possession  of 
by  the  masons  engaged  in  building  the  Samuel  Curtis  house  in  1830 
(Quincy  Patriot,  Oct.  26,  1889)  :  and  they,  with  no  idea  whatever 
of  the  act  of  desecration  they  were  committing,  not  improbably  used 
it  in  common  with  the  stones  of  the  old  boundary  wall,  near  the 
street  end  of  which  it  is  said  to  have  stood,  as  foundation  material. 
Indeed,  the  tradition  is  that  all  this  stone  was  "utilized"  for  the 
underpinning  of  the  barn  built  close  behind  the  house,  and  still 
standing.  If  such  is  the  case,  it  is  within  the  bounds  of  possibility 
that  the  old  eleventh  milestone  may  yet  be  recovered,  and  restored  to 
the  place  where  it  stood  for  more  than  a  century.  The  twelfth 
milestone  still  stands  on  the  rising  ground  beyond  the  southern 
slope  of  Penn's  Hill,  on  the  easterly  side  of  the  road.  It  bears, 
besides  the  indications  of  distance  and  date  (1727),  two  sets  of 
initials,  I.  M.  and  I.  H.  I  have  not  ascertained  of  whom  they  are 
commemorative.  Some  years  ago  a  highly  utilitarian  surveyor  of 
highways  seized  on  this  stone  as  a  handy  cover  for  a  drain  or 
culvert  he  was  engaged  in  constructing.  Fortunately  this  act  of 
vandalism  came  to  the  knowledge  of  Samuel  A.  Bates,  the  veteran 
town  clerk  and  antiquarian  of  Braintree,  who  bestirred  himself  in 
time,  and  was  lucky  enough  to  induce  the  selectmen  to  interfere 
and  preserve  the  memorial. 

It  has  been  the  same  with  the  names  of  streets  and  localities. 
The  section  of  the  ancient  historical  coast  road  of  Massachusetts 
Bay,  provided  for  by  action  of  the  General  Court  in  1639,  the 
route  of  which  through  Old  Braintree  was  fixed  finally  in  1648, — 
this  most  interesting  of  all  New  England  roads,  connecting,  as  it 
did,  Boston  with  Plymouth  when  both  were  the  capitals  of  separate 
colonies,  —  this  Coast  Road,  instead  of  being  known   as   such,  or. 


APPENDIX.  43 

at  least,  if  it  must  be  modernized,  as  "  The  Plymouth  Road,"  or  even 
as  "Plymouth  Street,"  —  this  ancient  thoroughfare  has,  in  Quincy, 
been  divided  up  under  the  meaningless  names  of  Adams,  Hancock, 
School  and  Franklin  streets  !  The  eager  desire  people,  especially 
the  residents  in  suburban  towns  and  cities,  have  for  living  in  a 
"  Street  "  or  on  an  "  Avenue  "  is  marked,  and  productive,  tradition- 
ally, of  disastrous  results.  Though  Park  Lane  in  London  is  one  of 
the  most  fashionable  quarters  of  the  metropolis  of  the  British  Empire, 
it  is  currently  supposed  that  the  dweller  in  the  outskirts  of  what  is 
known  as  a  "  live  American  town  "  cannot  sleep  quietly  in  bed  if  he, 
or  more  usually  she,  lives  in  a  house  in  a  "  Road  "  or  a  "Lane." 
Accordingly,  in  Quincy,  not  only  has  the  Old  Plymouth  Road  been 
dismembered  and  brought  to  life  again  in  the  way  just  described, 
but,  among  other  and  similar  cases,  "  Col.  Quincy's  Gate  "  has  been 
re-baptized  as  Bridge  Street,  and  "  The  President's  Lane,"  so  called 
because  John  Adams  opened  it  to  reach  his  cow-pasture  on  Stony- 
Field  Hill,  has  been  converted  —  Heaven  only  knows  why  —  into 
Goffe,  or  Gofifee,  Street.  Finally,  the  noble  tree-lined  private  avenue 
laid  out  from  the  Neponset  turnpike  to  his  dwelling  by  the  third 
Josiah  Quincy,  nearly  a  century  ago,  instead  of  being  known  for 
all  time  as  "  President  Quincy's  Avenue,"  has  lately  turned  up  as 
commonplace  Elm  Avenue. 

But  the  worst  act  of  vandalism  of  this  sort  is  the  most  recent.  In 
the  northern  portion  of  Quincy,  near  Squantum,  there  was  a  region 
known  from  time  immemorial  as  the  "  Farms  District."  It  was  a 
broad  plain  some  distance  south  of  the  Neponset,  and  lying  between 
the  bay  front  and  the  swamps  through  which  the  line  of  the  Old 
Colony  railroad  was  run.  In  all  Massachusetts  there  was  no  site 
of  greater  historical  interest  than  this,  for  from  it  the  Commonwealth 
may,  in  some  sense,  be  said  to  have  derived  its  name.  Writing  in 
1633,  William  Woods  said  of  it:  "This  place  is  called  Massachu- 
setts Fields,  where  the  greatest  Sagamore  in  the  country  lived,  before 
the  plague,  who  caused  it  to  be  cleared  for  himself."  Accordingly  it 
was  to  this  point  that  Miles  Standish  and  his  fellow  explorers  from 
Plymouth  directed  their  course  when,  on  the  29th  of  September, 
1 62 1,  they  made  their  first  visit  to  the  country  of  the  Massachusetts 
{Mejnorial  History  of  Boston,  vol.  i.  p.  64).  It  was  the  central  gath- 
ering place  —  at  once  the  play-field  and  the  muster-ground  —  of  that 
"goodly,  strong  and  well-proportioned  people"  whom  the  redoubt- 
able Captain  John  Smith  described  as  being  "  very  kind,  but  in 
their  fury  no  less  valiant." 


44  THE   CENTENNIAL   MILESTONE. 

In  the  winter  of  1891-92  this  historical  spot — the  spot  which 
was  to  the  Massachusetts  what  the  Isthmian  Fields  were  to  the 
Greeks — passed  into  the  hands  of  a  suburban  land  company.  As 
one  means  of  bringing  it  into  notice,  the  promoters  of  the  enterprise 
advertised  for  a  name,  offering  a  sum  of  money  as  a  prize  for  that 
which  should  be  selected  as  most  euphonious  and  appropriate. 
From  this  ordeal  the  Massachusetts  Fields  emerged  as  "Norfolk 
Downs"  !  It  might,  with  far  greater  propriety  and  significance,  have 
been  designated   Billings'  Upland. 

But  Norfolk  Downs  is  merely  the  last  historical  misnomer.  The 
next  to  the  last  was  nearly,  though  not  quite,  as  bad.  In  1870 
Taylor's  Hill  in  North  Quincy  passed  into  the  hands  of  a  land 
company,  and,  as  usual,  went  in  search  of  a  name.  It  shortly  re- 
appeared as  Wollaston  Heights  ;  by  which  designation  it  since  has 
been,  and  hereafter  doubtless  will  be,  known.  Dimblebee  Heights 
would  have  been  quite  as  appropriate  (Braintree  Records,  p.  30). 

On  the  other  hand,  Taylor's  Hill  might  well  have  been  given  a  name 
of  the  greatest  possible  historical  significance.  As  the  investigations 
of  Mr.  Edwin  W.  Marsh,  —  that  "valued  friend"  of  mine  "of  the 
antique  stock,"  to  whom  I  have  referred  in  the  opening  of  this 
Address,  —  as  Mr.  Marsh's  investigations  have  shown,  Taylor's  Hill 
and  the  whole  surrounding  region  covered  by  the  Wollaston  Heights 
settlement,  was  a  portion  of  the  tract,  including  six  hundred  acres, 
allotted  in  1636  by  the  town  of  Boston  to  William  Hutchinson,  the 
husband  of  that  Mistress  Anne  Hutchinson  whose  name  is  burned 
deep  into  the  early  history  of  Massachusetts.  It  was  to  her  hus- 
band's house  on  this  grant  that  Anne  Hutchinson  came  on  her  way 
to  Rhode  Island  when  banished  from  the  colony  of  Massachusetts 
Bay  in  April,  1638.  Wollaston  Heights  is  therefore  another  mean- 
ingless misnomer ;  the  locality  should  have  been  called  Hutchinson 
Heights.     The  name  would  then  have  signified  much. 


B. 

There  is  no  branch  of  modern  science  the  conclusions  reached  in 
which  have  undergone  greater  or  more  constant  revisions  than  have 
those  reached  in  geology.  As  matter  of  future,  and  at  some  remote 
day  possibly  of  curious,  reference,  it  may  be  worth  while  to  state 
briefly  the  theory  at  this  time  most  currently  accepted  of  the  latest 


APPENDIX.  45 

geological  reconstruction  of  the  territory  now  included  in  the  limits 
of  Quincy. 

Prior  to  the  last  glacial  period  the  New  England  coast  line  is 
supposed  to  have  run  some  fifty  or  sixty  miles  farther  east  and 
south  than  it  now  does,  along  what  is  known  as  the  Continental 
Shelf.  The  territory  which  now  constitutes  Quincy  was,  therefore, 
at  that  time  an  inland  locality,  some  two  hundred  feet  higher  above 
the  sea-level  than  it  now  is.  The  Merrimac  River,  instead  of 
turning  towards  the  north  at  Lowell,  as  at  present,  flowed  in  a  south- 
easterly direction,  finding  its  way  to  the  ocean  through  the  depres- 
sion which  is  now  Boston  Harbor.  As  respects  the  ocean,  the  site 
of  Quincy,  therefore,  was  somewhat  as  Springfield  now  is,  —  perhaps 
an  equal  distance  from  the  sea-board  and  on  a  river  of  not  much  less 
magnitude  than  the  Connecticut.  Like  the  neighboring  region,  the 
Blue  Hills  and  Mount  Ararat  stood  some  two  hundred  feet  higher 
than  they  now  do,  while  the  other  Quincy  hills  (with  the  exception 
probably  of  Penn's  Hill),  Taylor's  Hill,  Forbes'  Hill,  President's 
Hill  and  Great  Hill, —  the  drumlins,  as  they  are  called  by  geol- 
ogists,—  did  not  exist.     They  are  all  of  glacial  formation. 

During  the  last  glacial  period  there  was  probably  from  three 
to  five  thousand  feet  of  solid  ice  over  the  highest  summit  of  the 
Blue  Hills.  After  the  ice  layers  had  attained  a  certain  thickness  a 
perceptible  subsidence  of  the  earth's  surface  followed.  This  process 
of  subsidence  went  slowly  and  steadily  on  under  the  increasing  pres- 
sure until  the  bulk  of  the  ice  disappeared.  The  subsidence  then 
amounted  to  some  two  hundred  feet,  and  the  present  shore-line 
of  Quincy  was  accordingly  submerged.  After  the  disappearance 
of  the  bulk  of  the  ice  the  crust  of  the  earth  rose  again  with,  geo- 
logically speaking,  considerable  rapidity,  some  twenty  feet  above 
the  present  coast-line  ;  then,  reacting,  it  reached  what  has  since  that 
time  been  the  established  level.  The  Quincy  territory  became  sea- 
board, and  the  local  geological  outlines  have  not  since  undergone 
material  change. 

During  the  glacial  period,  and  especially  after  the  ice  began  to 
melt  and  retreat,  several  sub-glacial  rivers  evidently  discharged 
their  waters  through  ice-tunnels  tending  in  a  southeasterly  direc- 
tion across  the  northerly  portion  of  Quincy.  The  line  of  the  Blue 
Hills  not  impossibly  served  as  a  barrier  of  retardation  in  the  retreat 
of  the  glaciers.  One  of  these  sub-glacial  streams  evidently  dis- 
charged itself  on  the  summit  of  what  is  now  known  as  Forbes'  Hill, 
as  the  ponds  on  the  summit  of  that  hill,  and  the  deep  erosive  de- 

7 


46  THE   CENTENNIAL   MILESTONE. 

pressions  on  each  side  of  it  clearly  show.  This  and  other  streams 
flowing  farther  north,  reached  the  sea  through  what  is  now  known  as 
Black's  Creek,  forming,  as  the  ice  disappeared,  the  kames  and  kettle- 
holes  clearly  to  be  distinguished  in  the  Merry  Mount  Park  and  the 
low  grounds  north  of  WoUaston  Heights. 

Through  the  forward  flow  of  ice,  during  the  glacial  period,  the  soil 
overlying  the  granite  and  slate  bed-rocks  of  Quincy  was  much 
eroded  and  borne  away  towards  the  southeast.  In  place  of  the  soil 
thus  removed  a  new  glacial  deposit  was  made  on  the  lines  now  ex- 
isting, of  which  the  Quincy  drumlins,  already  referred  to,  are  the 
distinguishing  feature.  One  of  the  present  theories  of  geologists, 
and  a  theory  as  plausible  as  any  j^et  suggested,  is  that  these  drum- 
lins were  accumulations  in  the  bed  of  the  ice  movement  of  much  the 
same  character  as  those  now  seen  wherever  a  body  of  water  runs 
over  a  comparatively  level  bottom.  In  such  cases,  any  obstacle 
which  causes  the  current  to  move  more  slowly  in  one  portion  of  the 
channel  than  in  another,  will  lead  to  an  accumulation  of  soil  or  ma- 
terial at  the  point  of  slackening.  In  this  way,  wherever,  after  the 
original  surface-soil  was  removed  by  the  ice-flow,  there  existed  on 
the  surface  of  the  country  a  ledge  or  other  unusual  obstacle,  such  as 
an  accumulation  of  boulders  more  easily  surmounted  than  removed, 
the  movement  of  the  ice  would  be  retarded  and  a  mound  of  glacial 
deposit  accumulated  greater  or  less  in  proportion  to  circumstances. 
At  the  same  time  other  portions  of  the  surface,  where  less  resistance 
was  met,  would  be  eroded  to  a  corresponding  degree.  The  exist- 
ence of  the  drumlins,  and  the  corresponding  depressions  and  water- 
courses, are  in  this  way  accounted  for  on  a  theory  at  least  plausible  ; 
though  numerous  other  theories  hardly  less  plausible  are  also  ad- 
vanced, and  can  be  found  in  the  text-books  (Wright,  Ice  Age  of 
North  America,  chap.  xi.). 

The  remoteness  of  these  changes  in  point  of  time  is  up  to  the 
present  a  subject  of  much  question  among  geologists.  Some  main- 
tain that  the  glacial  period  was  at  least  fifty  thousand  years  ago  ; 
while  others  argue  that  it  was  not  more  than  eight  or  ten  thou- 
sand. In  the  case  of  Quincy  the  superficial  indications  strongly 
favor  the  shorter  period.  The  marks  of  glacial  action  in  the  shape 
of  kames,  ponds  and  drumlins  are  so  fresh  that  it  is  difficult  to 
believe  a  period  of  even  eight  thousand  years  can  have  elapsed  since 
the  action  which  created  these  features  of  Quincy.  The  drumlins, 
for  instance,  are  covered  as  a  rule  with  a  deposit  of  vegetable  loam 
not  over  ten  inches  in  depth.     As  is  well  understood  by  geologists, 


APPENDIX.  47 

the  accumulation  of  loam  goes  on  under  some  law  the  conditions  of 
which  do  not  yet  admit  of  statement,  and  no  inference  as  to  age  can 
safely  be  drawn  from  the  presence  or  absence  of  that  deposit ;  but 
assuming  that  only  eight  thousand  years  have  elapsed  since  the  end 
of  the  glacial  period,  it  would  follow  that  the  vegetable  accumulation 
on  the  Quincy  hills  has  not  exceeded  an  inch  and  a  half  in  a 
thousand  years.  As  these  drumlins  were,  until  within  the  last  two 
hundred  years,  covered  with  trees  and  undergrowth  in  the  same  way 
that  the  Blue  Hills  and  other  uncultivated  upland  portions  of  Quincy 
now  are,  it  is  not  easy  to  see  how  the  accumulations  of  vegetable 
deposit  could  have  been  so  slow.  Admitting  the  argument  that  this 
accumulation  was  prevented  by  the  natural  process  of  erosion,  and 
especially  by  the  heavy  rains  which  must  have  marked  the  earlier 
period  after  the  disappearance  of  the  ice,  it  would  follow  that  the 
drumlins  ought  to  be  cut  deep  by  ravines,  the  channels  of  water- 
courses, and  that  a  large  accumulation  of  soil  would  be  found  in  the 
adjacent  valleys.  Such  is  not  the  case.  .  The  drumlins  bear  no  indi- 
cations of  extensive  erosion,  or,  indeed,  of  any  erosion,  except  of  a 
gradual  and  equal  character ;  neither  is  there  any  undue  accumula- 
tion of  soil  in  the  valleys.  On  the  other  hand,  such  accumulation 
as  has  taken  place,  in  swamps  and  elsewhere,  is  indicative  of  the 
passage  of  a  brief  geological  period  only.  In  fact,  were  not  the 
indications  at  other  points  clear  that  the  ice  period  occurred  at  least 
eight  thousand  years  ago,  the  surface  evidence  in  Quincy  would  lead 
lay  or  superficial  observers  to  infer  that  hardly  an  eighth  part  of  that 
time  could  have  elapsed. 


Among  the  reasons  for  the  incorporation  of  Quincy  as  an  inde- 
pendent town,  assigned  in  the  petition  of  January,  1791,  was  the 
following : — 

"Your  petitioners  impressed  with  Common  sentiments  of  their  Country 
have  a  warm  desire  of  seeing  their  Children  educated  in  such  a  manner  as 
is  best  adapted  to  render  them  the  most  useful  members  of  Society  and 
as  they  inhabit  a  long  extent  of  Sea  coast,  their  Character  and  habits  of 
life  will  naturally  take  a  maritime  cast  and  an  education  adapted  to  fit 
them  for  trade  navigation  fishery  and  their  attendant  arts  and  manufac- 
tures would  be  very  desirable,  and  as  your  petitioners  humbly  conceive 
would  be  greatly  advanced  under  such  an  incorporation  where  those  that 


48  THE   CENTENNIAL   MILESTONE. 

advance  their  money  for  Schools  might  apply  it  to  the  best  advantage 
and  our  youth  be  thereby  rendered  more  extensively  useful  to  their  families 
and  beneficial  to  the  pubhck." 

Following  the  sea  during  the  eighteenth  century  would  next  to 
agriculture  seem  to  have  been  the  favorite  caUing  of  the  young  men 
of  Braintree  North  Precinct.  During  the  Revolution  Mrs.  Adams 
wrote  :  "  The  rage  for  privateering  is  as  great  here  as  anywhere. 
Vast  numbers  are  employed  in  that  way;"  and  in  June,  1780, 
when  the  privateer  Essex,  from  Salem,  was  captured  in  the  Eng- 
lish Channel,  twelve  Braintree  young  men  were  in  her  crew.  Most 
of  them  were  from  the  North  Precinct,  and  in  proportion  to  popula- 
tion the  loss  was  equivalent  to  that,  possibly,  of  one  hundred  and 
fifty  young  men  in  1890. 

The  French  Reign  of  Terror  began  with  the  decapitation  of 
Louis  XVI.  in  January,  1 793,  in  consequence  of  which  war  was  de- 
clared against  France  by  Great  Britain  in  the  following  February. 
At  a  special  town-meeting,  held  in  Quincy  six  months  later,  on 
August  12th,  it  was  — 

"  Voted,  that  Benja.  Beale  Esq,  Hon.  Richard  Cranch  esq  and  Moses 
Black  esqr  be  a  Committee  to  make  a  reply  to  a  circular  letter  sent  by 
the  Merchants  and  traders  of  the  town  of  Boston  to  the  Select  Men  of  this 
town. 

"  Voted,  that  the  above  Committee  be  a  standing  Committee  to  see  that 
there  be  not  any  privateers  fitted  out  from  this  place  by  any  of  the  Citizens 
of  the  United  States  or  others  against  any  of  the  Beligerent  powers,  in 
order  that  a  strict  neutrality  may  be  kept  between  us  and  them." 


D. 

The  petition  for  the  incorporation  of  Quincy  was  presented  to  the 
General  Court  in  January,  1791.  As  stated  in  the  text,  it  was  signed 
by  one  hundred  and  fifty  persons,  bearing  fifty-nine  different  names. 
Of  these  one  hundred  and  fifty  persons,  one  hundred  and  twenty- 
nine  were  residents  in  the  North  Precinct  of  Braintree,  five  in  those 
portions  of  Dorchester,  south  of  the  Neponset,  known  as  "  the 
Farms"  and  Squantum,  nine  in  the  adjacent  easterly  portion  of 
Milton,  and  seven  in  that  portion  of  the  Middle  Precinct  of  Brain- 
tree known  as  "  Knight's  Neck."  In  the  following  list  of  the  sep- 
arate family  names  found  appended  to  the  petition  of  1791,  Pierce, 


APPENDIX. 


49 


Rowe  and  Rawson  belonged  to  Milton,  and  the  territory  in  which 
they  lived  was  not  made  part  of  Quincy.  Randall  was  of  Knight's 
Neck,  which  was  not  annexed  to  Quincy  until  1856,  at  which  date 
no  one  named  Randall  lived  there.  Those  names  in  the  list  printed 
in  Roman  are  still  borne  by  residents  of  Quincy,  either  descendants 
of,  or  from  the  same  stock  as,  those  who  signed  the  petition  ;  those 
printed  in  Italics  are  either  extinct  in  Quincy,  or,  if  found  there, 
are  borne  by  persons  not  of  the  same  family  as  those  bearing 
the  name  who  signed  the  petition.  Making  allowance  for  the 
three  Milton  names  of  Pierce,  Rowe  and  Rawson,  but  including 
the  Braintree  name  of  Randall  as  resident  in  a  locality  subse- 
quently annexed  to  Quincy,  it  will  be  seen  that  twenty-eight  out 
of  fifty-six  family  names,  or  one  half  of  the  whole  number,  have 
within  the  century  become  extinct  in  Quincy,  in  persons  of  the 
same  stock.  Many  of  them  would  doubtless  be  found  in  other 
localities  :  — 


Adams. 

Burrill. 

Hayden. 

Pray. 

Alley  lie. 

Chandler. 

Hobart. 

Quincy. 

Apthrop. 

Cheseman. 

Mollis. 

Randall. 

Arnold. 

Clark. 

Norton. 

Rawson. 

Beale. 

Cleverly. 

Howard. 

Rowe. 

Badcock. 

Copeland. 

Hunt. 

Sanders. 

Bass. 

Cranch. 

Marsh. 

Savil. 

Baxter. 

Crane. 

Mead. 

Spear. 

Belcher. 

Crosby. 

Mears. 

Stetson. 

Bicknell. 

Curtis. 

Miller. 

Tirrell. 

Billings. 

Field. 

Newcomb. 

Turner. 

Black. 

Gay. 

Nightingale. 

Veasey. 

Blanchard. 

Glover. 

Phipps. 

Webb. 

Brackett. 

Hall. 

Pierce. 

White. 

Brown. 

Hardwick. 

Pratt. 

E. 


The  Quincy  city  charter  may  not  improbably  hereafter  prove  an 
interesting  document  in  the  history  of  the  gradual  development  of 
the  American  municipality  of  the  future,  —  that  result  to  which  the 
country  is  now  slowly  groping  its  way.  A  somewhat  detailed  state- 
ment of  the  course  of  events  and  line  of  discussion  which  led  up  to 


50  THE   CENTENNIAL   MILESTONE. 

it  will,   therefore,  not  be  out  of  place,  and  may  hereafter  become 
useful  for  reference. 

The  change  from  town  to  city  government  began  to  be  actively 
agitated  in  Quincy  towards  the  close  of  the  year  1884,  and  at  a  meet- 
ing of  citizens  of  the  Wollaston  Heights  district  then  held,  a  com- 
mittee was  appointed  to  consider  and  report  on  the  whole  subject. 
Subsequently  at  an  adjourned  meeting  on  the  3d  of  January,  1885, 
Mr.  Josiah  Quincy,  on  behalf  of  the  committee,  presented  an  elabo- 
rate report,  which  was  printed  in  full  in  the  Quincy  Patriot  of 
the  following  Saturday  (January  loth).  As  the  charter  subsequently 
framed  was  in  the  main  the  work  of  Mr.  Quincy,  the  following  pass- 
age from  this  report  is  of  interest  as  indicating  the  fundamental 
principles  on  which  the  instrument  was  based :  — 

"  The  trouble  with  the  usual  form  of  city  government  is  that  it  seems  to 
be  framed  for  the  purpose  of  hopelessly  mixing  up  executive  and  legisla- 
tive functions,  and  securing  general  irresponsibility  and  inefBciency ;  city 
offices  are  filled  partly  by  election  by  the  people,  partly  by  election  by  the 
legislative  body,  partly  by  appointment  by  the  mayor  without  confirmation, 
and  partly  by  the  mayor  with  confirmation  by  the  legislative  body;  de- 
partments are  headed  by  unpaid  commissions  of  men  having  no  special 
knowledge  of  the  work  which  they  have  under  their  charge;  a  new  mayor 
finds  the  offices  filled  with  men  over  whom  he  has  no  control,  and  who  hold 
their  places  independent  of  his  will.  The  resuli  of  such  a  system  is  that 
very  few  men  of  proper  executive  ability  are  willing  to  take  the  office  of 
mayor,  for  they  know  that  they  will  be  held  responsible  if  things  go 
wrong,  without  being  given  sufficient  power  to  make  them  go  right ;  if  the 
right  man  occasionally  happens  to  be  elected,  the  result  is  public  disap- 
pointment at  seeing  how  little  he  is  able  to  accomplish,  and  the  discourage- 
ment of  future  efforts  at  reform.  Public  indignation  vents  itself  against 
the  legislative  body  as  a  whole,  without  often  being  able  to  fix  any  respon- 
sibility upon  any  member  or  members  of  it.  The  legislative  body  usurps 
most  of  the  executive  functions,  and  the  result  is  inefficiency  and  extrava- 
gance, if  not  actual  corruption.  A  class  of  small  common-council  politi- 
cians is  created  who  make  their  Hving  by  some  hook  or  crook  out  of 
managing  the  affairs  of  the  city.  Such  a  condition  of  things,  especially  in 
the  large  cities,  is  only  too  famihar  to  all.  Your  committee  beheves, 
however,  that  these  evils  can  be  avoided,  as  they  have  been  already  in 
some  cities,  by  the  adoption  of  a  simple,  business-hke  form  of  government. 
The  principal  point  should  be  to  give  the  mayor  full  executive  powers, 
holding  him  to  a  strict  responsibility  to  the  people  for  the  manner  in 
which  he  exercises  them,  and  to  confine  the  legislative  body  strictly  to  its 
function,  which  has  been  well  described  as  that  of  '  critics  with  the  power 
of  the  purse.'  Such  an  apparently  simple  and  reasonable  proposidon 
involves,  however,  radical  changes  in  the  scheme  of  municipal  government 
adopted  by  all  of  the  cities  of  this  State." 


APPENDIX.  51 

A  mass  meeting  of  citizens  of  the  town,  at  which  some  six  or 
seven  hundred  were  present,  was  held  in  the  Town  Hall  on  the  8th 
of  January,  and  the  subject  of  a  change  of  government  discussed, 
the  usual  arguments  for  and  against  it  being  set  forth  by  a  number 
of  speakers  ;  and  at  an  adjourned  meeting,  held  on  the  15th  of  the 
same  month,  a  committee  of  thirty  was  appointed  to  take  the  whole 
subject  into  consideration.  It  was  not  until  Monday,  November  30th, 
that  another  public  meeting  was  held.  Meanwhile  the  committee 
had  prepared  majority  and  minority  reports,  the  former  in  favor  of 
and  the  latter  adverse  to  a  change  of  government,  and  both  reports 
had  been  printed  in  the  issue  of  the  Quincy  Patriot  for  Novem- 
ber 14th,  1885,  where  they  can  be  found. 

At  the  meeting  of  November  30th  a  strong  opposition  to  the  pro- 
posed change  developed  itself  under  the  lead  of  Mr,  H,  H.  Faxon 
and  Dr.  William  Everett ;  but  at  an  adjourned  meeting  held  a  week 
later  it  was  voted  to  appoint  a  committee  of  fifteen  to  frame  a 
charter  and  submit  it  for  consideration  at  a  future  meeting.  Of  this 
committee  Mr.  Theophilus  King  was  chairman  ;  but  the  details  of 
the  work  committed  to  it  were  put  in  the  hands  of  a  sub-committee 
consisting  of  Messrs.  Josiah  Quincy  and  Sigourney  Butler. 

For  over  a  year  the  matter  remained  under  the  careful  advisement 
of  these  two  gentlemen,  both  of  whom  were  graduates  of  Harvard 
College,  Mr.  Quincy  having  been  graduated  in  the  class  of  1880, 
and  Mr.  Butler  in  that  of  1877  ;  both  also  were  lawyers,  and  felt  a 
keen  interest  in  the  subject  they  had  under  investigation.  Accord- 
ingly they  not  only  made  a  careful  study  of  municipal  government 
in  America,  but  put  themselves  in  communication  with  every  one 
within  convenient  reach,  —  including,  among  many  others,  Mr. 
Gamaliel  Bradford  of  Boston,  and  Mayor  Seth  Low  of  Brooklyn, 
N.  Y.,  —  who  had  made  a  special  study  of  the  subject,  or  had 
practical  experience  in  it. 

The  report  of  the  committee,  and  a  form  of  charter  accompanying 
it,  was  submitted  through  the  columns  of  the  Patriot  of  January  29, 
1887.  The  following  passage  from  this  report  is  of  interest  as  mat- 
ter of  record,  especially  that  portion  of  it  which  relates  to  the  subject 
of  minority  representation.  This  possible  feature  in  municipal 
government,  referred  to  in  the  text  as  vital,  was,  it  will  be  seen, 
fully  considered  in  framing  the  charter,  but  omitted  from  it  on  the 
sole  ground  that  the  time  for  successfully  introducing  so  novel  a 
feature  into  a  city  charter  had  not  yet  come.  It  was  dangerous  to 
attempt  everything  at  once  :  — 


52  THE   CENTENNIAL   MILESTONE. 

"  The  charter  has  been  drawn  on  the  general  Hnes  recommended  in  the 
report  of  a  former  sub-committee  of  your  body.  The  complete  separation 
of  the  legislative  and  executive  departments  of  city  government,  which 
was  urged  in  that  report  as  of  the  first  importance,  has  been  fully  carried 
out  in  the  present  draft.  As  this  involves  something  of  a  departure  from 
the  common  form  of  city  government,  your  committee  venture  to  reca- 
pitulate some  of  the  arguments  formerly  submitted.  The  extravagance, 
inefificiency,  and  corruption  which  unhappily  are  so  often  seen  in  city  gov- 
ernments can  hardly  be  claimed  to  exist  because  they  are  approved  by 
a  majority  of  the  voters  ;  they  exist,  on  the  contrary,  because  the  majority 
are  unable,  through  defects  in  the  scheme  of  government,  to  secure  an 
honest  and  efficient  administration  of  their  affairs,  and  because  a  confused 
and  vicious  municipal  organization  paralyzes  all  effort  to  secure  good 
government.  The  fundamental  trouble  in  most  city  governments  is  their 
failure  to  make  a  proper  distinction  between  the  legislative  and  executive 
functions,  and  to  keep  them  separate  from  each  other.  The  necessity  of 
such  separation  is  conceded  in  theory  as  one  of  the  cardinal  principles  of 
our  republican  government,  but  in  practice  it  has  been  almost  universally 
ignored  so  far  as  cities  are  concerned.  All  of  the  corporate  powers  are 
lodged  in  the  mayor  and  the  city  council  ;  but  in  distributing  these  powers 
between  them  the  charter  commonly  gives  to  the  council  not  only  all  of  the 
legislative,  but  an  important  part  of  the  executive  powers  as  well,  and 
leaves  it  free  to  usurp  still  further  executive  powers,  according  to  the  com- 
mon tendency  of  legislative  bodies.  In  defiance  of  the  maxim,  '  Delibera- 
tion is  the  work  of  many.  Execution  is  the  work  of  one,'  the  soundness  of 
which  is  supported  by  all  the  past  experience  of  the  world,  the  attempt  has 
been  made  to  conduct  municipal  governments  upon  the  theory  that  execu- 
tion as  well  as  deliberation  may  properly  be  made  the  work  of  many.  The 
natural  result  is  inefficiency  and  extravagance,  if  not  corruption.  It  is  as 
contrary  to  sound  principles  to  give  a  city  council  the  power  to  choose 
executive  officers,  or  to  reject  the  mayor's  appointment  of  such  officers, 
or  to  administer  a  department  of  the  city  government  through  a  committee 
of  its  members,  as  it  would  be  to  give  a  mayor  the  sole  power  to  pass  a 
municipal  ordinance  or  to  make  an  appropriation.  The  circumstances 
under  which  our  government  was  founded  naturally  gave  to  those  who 
shaped  its  first  institutions  an  excessive  dread  of  a  strong  executive,  and 
led  them  to  extend  the  legislative  power  at  its  expense.  But  the  bitter 
and  costly  experience  of  municipal  misgovernment  ought  by  this  time 
to  have  taught  the  lesson  that  there  are  greater  dangers,  at  any  rate  so  far 
as  the  government  of  cities  is  concerned,  than  any  that  can  attend  the 
granting  of  full  executive  powers  to  the  mayor.  To  give  such  powers 
does  not  remove  the  government  further  from  the  people  ;  on  the  contrary, 
it  brings  it  nearer  to  them,  and  renders  it  much  more  subject  to  their  con- 
trol. Under  a  popular  government  experience  has  proved  that  one  man 
can  nearly  always  be  held  strictly  responsible  for  the  exercise  of  powers 
intrusted  to  him,  but  that  a  body  of  men  is  often  irresponsible.  A  mayor 
is  not  likely  to  deliberately  pursue  a  wrong  course  of  action  in  defiance  of 
public  opinion;  but  when  a  council  is  once  allowed  to  meddle  with  the 


APPENDIX.  53 

executive  department  and  to  have  control  of  the  expenditure  of  money  or 
the  making  of  appointments,  defiance  of  public  opinion  on  its  part  becomes 
a  frequent  occurrence,  and  when  election  day  comes  there  is  generally 
a  complete  failure  to  hold  its  members  to  any  responsibility.  Public 
opinion  is  nearly  always  irresistible  when  justly  aroused  and  concentrated 
upon  one  man ;  but  it  is  too  apt  to  lose  all  of  its  force  when  it  has  to 
expend  itself  upon  a  body  of  men  supporting  one  another  in  wrong-doing. 

"  The  mayor  is  just  as  much  the  servant  of  the  people  as  is  the  humblest 
member  of  a  common  council,  and  from  the  nature  of  his  position  is  far 
more  subject  to  their  control.  The  simpler  the  form  of  government  is 
made,  the  more  likely  the  people  are  to  understand  and  control  it.  The 
responsibility  of  a  mayor  for  executive  work  over  which  he  is  given  full 
control  is  something  that  can  be  made  clear  to  the  dullest  voter ;  the 
responsibility  of  a  councilman  who  has  supported  a  job  cannot  often  be  so 
easily  fixed  and  understood.  Under  a  proper  charter  a  city  should  be 
governed  with  some  approach  to  the  standard  of  efficiency  attained  by  a 
large  private  corporation  in  the  management  of  its  business  ;  but  such 
efficiency  can  only  be  reached  by  a  system  of  government  which  secures 
the  adoption  of  business  principles.  Spasmodic  efforts  to  secure  a  busi- 
ness-like administration  of  city  affairs  through  a  citizen's  movement  at 
election  time  must  be  of  temporary  benefit  at  best  if  the  system  of  city 
government  is  allowed  to  rest  upon  an  utterly  unbusiness-like  basis.  The 
separation  in  politics  of  local  affairs  from  those  of  the  state  or  nation  is 
very  rarely  possible,  but  the  municipal  government  can  be  placed  upon 
such  a  basis  that  whether  administered  by  the  candidate  of  a  citizens'  con- 
vention, or  of  one  of  the  regular  political  parties,  it  will  be  likely  to  be 
conducted  upon  business  principles. 

"  In  view  of  the  above  considerations  your  committee  in  its  draft  of  a 
charter  has  given  the  mayor  absolute  power  of  appointing  and  removing 
all  of  the  municipal  officers  therein  established,  excepting  only  the  mem- 
bers of  the  council,  the  members  of  the  school  committee,  which  consti- 
tutes a  co-ordinate  and  independent  branch  of  the  executive  department, 
and  chooses  its  own  superintendent  of  schools,  and  the  auditor  of  accounts 
and  comptroller,  if  any,  the  latter  officers  being  chosen  by  the  council  to 
act  as  a  check  upon  the  executive  department.  All  of  these  municipal 
officers  are  given  the  same  absolute  power  to  appoint  and  remove  the 
subordinates  in  their  respective  departments. 

"To  compensate  for  the  large  powers  given  to  the  mayor,  your  com- 
mittee has  imposed  upon  him  large  responsibilities  to  the  council  and  to 
the  public.  The  mayor  and  his  administrative  officers  are  required  to  be 
present  at  all  regular  meetings  of  the  council,  and  to  give  such  information 
as  may  be  asked  for  as  to  the  business  of  their  respective  offices;  they  are 
given  the  right  to  speak  upon  all  matters  relating  to  their  offices,  but  with- 
out the  right  to  vote.  They  are  also  required  to  place  upon  public  record 
the  reasons  for  every  removal  from  office  made  by  them.  The  mayor  may 
further  be  removed  at  any  time  by  vote  of  two-thirds  of  all  the  members  of 
the  council;  this  provision  will  certainly  be  likely  to  act  as  a  check  upon 
any  mayor  who  is  inclined  to  abuse  his  powers,  and  as  a  sufficient  safe- 


54  THE    CENTENNIAL   MILESTONE. 

guard  and  means  of  remedy  in  case  such  abuse  ever  actually  takes  place. 
The  term  of  office  of  the  mayor  has  been  left  at  one  year,  the  customary 
term  in  the  cities  of  this  Commonwealth,  although  it  has  been  lengthened 
in  some  large  cities  elsewhere  to  two  years  or  more  ;  if  a  mayor  is  given 
proper  powers  there  seems  to  be  no  great  objection  to  requiring  him  to 
present  himself  to  the  people  for  re-election  as  often  as  once  a  year. 

"  The  only  officers  besides  the  mayor  who  are  to  be  elected  by  the  people 
according  to  the  charter  drafted  are  the  members  of  the  council  and  the 
members  of  the  school  committee  ;  your  committee  believes  that  all  other 
officers  properly  constitute  a  part  of  the  mayor's  administration,  and  there- 
fore should  be  appointed  by  him.  Members  of  the  school  committee  are 
left  to  be  elected,  as  at  present,  two  members  each  year  to  serve  for  a 
period  of  three  years. 

"  Your  committee  has  given  much  consideration  to  the  subject  of  the 
city  council.  In  accordance  with  the  recommendation  of  the  former  report 
above  referred  to,  a  single  branch  only  has  been  established,  instead  of  two 
branches.  The  reasons  urged  in  favor  of  two  branches  do  not  seem  to  be 
of  much  weight  in  the  case  of  cities,  while  they  tend  to  confusion  and  divi- 
sion of  responsibility.  The  single  legislative  body,  which  it  is  proposed 
to  call  the  council  rather  than  the  board  of  aldermen,  is  not  an  entirely 
new  departure,  as  it  was  adopted  in  the  recent  charter  in  the  city  of  Wal- 
tham  in  this  State,  and  has  also  been  in  force  in  Brooklyn,  where  several 
years  of  experience  have  been  in  its  favor,  as  well  as  in  other  large  cities. 
In  regard  to  the  number  of  the  council,  there  has  been  some  difference  of 
opinion  in  your  committee,  and  a  minority  favors  a  larger  number  of  mem- 
bers than  twenty-three,  —  the  number  settled  upon. 

"As  to  the  manner  of  electing  members  of  the  council,  your  committee 
has  followed  the  recommendation  of  the  former  report,  and  submits  a  plan 
for  the  election  of  eleven  of  the  twenty-three  members  on  a  ticket  at  large, 
and  of  the  remaining  twelve  by  districts. 

"Much  consideration  has  also  been  given  by  your  committee  to  the 
question  of  adopting  some  form  of  minority  representation,  with  the  object 
of  securing  in  the  council  a  proportional  representation  of  the  opinions 
held  by  the  voters;  by  the  present  method  of  election  a  bare  majority  of 
the  voters  can  elect  all  of  the  members  of  what  should  be  a  representative 
body,  giving  no  representation  at  all  to  the  minority  party.  The  plan  of 
cumulative  voting,  which  is  now  in  force  in  some  elections  in  this  country 
as  well  as  in  England,  was  fully  considered,  and  rejected  as  not  entirely 
satisfactory.  While  all  the  members  of  your  committee  admit  the  justice 
and  desirability  of  minority  representation,  three  of  them  do  not  consider  it 
expedient  to  incorporate  in  the  draft  of  the  charter  any  plan  for  securing 
it,  and  it  is  therefore  reported  without  one  ;  while  three  other  members, 
believing  that  the  system  known  as  the  single  transferable  vote  is  a  scien- 
tific and  satisfactory  one,  involving  only  difficulties  in  counting  the  ballots, 
which  may  well  be  undergone  for  the  sake  of  the  advantages  to  be  gained, 
are  in  favor  of  incorporating  in  the  charter  a  provision  for  such  a  system. 
In  case  the  adoption  of  any  more  elaborate  system  of  minority  representa- 
tion is  not  favored,  it  is  suggested  that  the  adoption  of  what  is  known  as 


APPENDIX.  55 

the  limited  vote,  —  e.  g.,  allowing  no  one  to  vote  for  more  than  seven  out  of 
the  eleven  councilmen  at  large,  —  would  secure,  with  great  simplicity,  a 
fairly  just  representation  of  the  minority  party." 

The  eleventh  section  of  the  charter  as  proposed,  being  the  second 
section  of  the  title  relating  to  the  legislative  department,  read  as 
follows  :  — 

"Section  ii.  Each  qualiiied  voter  shall  be  entitled  in  all  elections  of 
councilmen  at  large  to  cast  as  many  votes  as  there  are  councilmen  at 
large  to  be  elected,  and  in  all  elections  of  councilmen  from  wards  to  cast 
as  many  votes  as  there  are  councilmen  to  be  elected  from  his  ward.  The 
persons  receiving  the  highest  number  of  votes  shall  be  declared  elected 
councilmen  at  large  and  councilmen  from  wards  respectively," 

A  series  of  public  meetings  were  subsequently  held,  at  which  the 
provisions  of  the  proposed  charter  were  debated  at  length.  At  two 
of  these,  held  on  May  7th  and  14th,  the  subject  of  minority  repre- 
sentation was  discussed  in  connection  with  the  proposed  section  11, 
and  a  strong  and  earnest  effort  was  made  by  the  more  enlightened 
portion  of  those  who  took  part  in  the  discussion  to  have  the  principle 
of  minority  representation  incorporated  in  the  instrument.  The 
chairman  of  the  meeting,  Mr.  J.  H.  Slade,  took  the  floor,  making  an 
earnest  speech  in  advocacy  of  it ;  it  was  also  advocated  by  Mr. 
Quincy.  The  principal  arguments  against  it  were  those  usually 
advanced  against  whatever  is  novel,  in  any  way  complicated,  or  but 
partially  understood.  The  opposition  manifested  was  sufficiently 
strong  to  show  that  the  committee  which  prepared  the  charter  was 
correct  in  its  conclusion  that  the  time  had  not  yet  come  for  a  system 
of  minority  representation,  in  Quincy  at  least,  and  the  issue  was  not 
pressed. 

As  a  result  of  these  discussions  the  charter  was  referred  back  for 
amendment  to  the  committee  which  reported  it,  and  was  subse- 
quently again  reported  in  a  new  draft,  through  the  columns  of  the 
Patriot  in  its  issue  of  November  26,  1887.  The  alterations  made 
in  the  original  draft  were  not  of  a  very  material  character ;  but,  so 
far  as  they  went,  especially  in  the  direction  of  an  increased  ward 
representation  in  the  council  and  a  decrease  in  the  number  of  those 
composing  the  council  chosen  at  large,  the  changes  distinctly  failed 
to  improve  the  original  draft.  They  tended  in  the  direction  of  the 
conventional  city  charter  and  in  favor  of  the  professional  and  ward 
politician.  The  human,  less  wise  than  the  animal,  sheep  insisted  as 
usual  on  being  in  the  custody  of  the  wolves. 


56  THE   CENTENNIAL   MILESTONE. 

A  town-meeting  was  then  called  for  Thursday,  December  ist,  1888, 
at  which,  after  an  animated  discussion,  the  form  of  charter  recom- 
mended was  approved,  and  a  committee  appointed  to  secure  its 
passage  by  the  Legislature.  It  became  a  law  on  the  17th  of  May 
following;  was  accepted  by  the  town  by  a  vote  of  812  in  favor,  to 
454  against  it,  at  a  special  town-meeting  held  on  the  nth  of  June  ; 
and  it  went  into  operation  on  the  5th  of   January,    1889. 


The  Quincy  charter  has  now  been  in  operation  for  three  years  and 
a  half.  It  may  be  said  generally  that  as  the  result  of  its  working 
the  impression  prevails  that  the  composition  of  the  council  —  the 
legislative  department  —  is  the  weak  point  in  it.  In  that  body  there 
has  been  a  noticeable  tendency  towards  the  sacrifice  of  general  to 
local  interests.  Ward  politics  and  requirements  have  been  unduly 
prominent.  This  it  is  claimed  is  due  to  the  feature  of  local  con- 
stituency in  the  charter,  and  to  the  want  of  any  provision  securing 
minority  representation.  The  students  of  municipal  government 
assert  that  the  Quincy  charter,  as  far  as  it  went,  was  based  on  cor- 
rect principles;  but  that  it  failed  to  carry  out  those  principles  to 
their  necessary  logical  result.  The  analogy  of  the  business  corpora- 
tion should  have  been  followed  to  its  full  extent,  and  all  the  members 
of  the  legislative  department  should  have  been  chosen  at  large,  re- 
gardless of  ward  lines  ;  with,  moreover,  some  provision  for  minority 
representation.  This  result,  it  is  argued,  would  have  been  brought 
about  to  manifest  advantage  had  the  charter  provided  for  the  election 
of  a  council  to  be  composed  of  fifteen,  or  twenty-one,  or  twenty-four 
members,  as  might  be  thought  best,  all  to  be  chosen  at  large,  while 
no  voter  could  vote  for  over  two  thirds  of  the  entire  number  to  be 
chosen ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  each  voter  should  have  been  at 
liberty  to  concentrate  all,  or  any  portion  of  the  votes  he  could  cast 
on  one  or  more  candidates,  or  to  distribute  them  among  the  full 
number  he  was  entitled  to  vote  for,  giving  one  vote  to  each.  The 
fifteen,  twenty-one  or  twenty-four  candidates  who  received  in  this  way 
the  largest  number  of  votes,  irrespective  of  the  size  of  the  several 
votes  as  compared  with  the  whole  or  each  other,  would  be  elected, 
and  would  compose  the  council. 

Had  such  a  system  of  electing  the  members  of  the  legislative 
department  been  made  a  part  of  the  Quincy  charter,  it  would,  it  is 
contended,   have  assured    an    almost   absolutely  free  constituency 


APPENDIX.  57 

Had  those  composing  this  total  constituency,  or  any  portion  of  them, 
desired  to  secure  ward  or  local  representation,  it  would  have  been 
easy  for  them  to  organize  themselves  so  as,  through  concentration  of 
votes,  to  bring  that  result  about.  It  was  right  that  they  should  have 
this  power.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  scattered  citizens  wished  to  form 
a  constituency  to  bring  about  certain  results,  or  choose  to  the  council 
particular  men,  it  ought  to  be  made  easy  for  them  so  to  do.  It  is  now 
difficult,  if  not  impossible.  Freedom  for  individual  action  was  the 
object  to  be  kept  in  view  and  the  result  to  be  secured ;  and  this 
result  cannot  be  attained  through  the  political  systems  now  in  use. 
It  could  be  attained  through  changes  in  the  basis  of  constituency 
of  the  kind  suggested. 

As  to  matters  of  detail,  and  the  innumerable  possible  complica- 
tions which  the  ingenuity  of  objectors  always  suggests,  these,  it  is 
argued,  could  safely  be  left  to  the  constituency  and  the  party  man- 
agers to  work  out.  If  left  alone,  they  would  do  this  as  the  difficulties 
arose,  and  in  the  easiest  and  most  practical  way.  A  great  deal  is  now 
heard  about  trusting  the  people  ;  but  those  who  most  freely  make  use 
of  this  phrase  are  apt  to  show  the  least  confidence  in  the  ability  of 
any  body  of  voters  to  work  an  experimental  system  into  practical 
shape  by  dealing  with  difficulties  as  they  arise,  and  not  before.  It 
would  probably  not  require  the  experience  of  three  elections  to 
familiarize  both  party  managers  and  the  great  body  of  voters  with 
the  theory  and  practice  both  of  minority  representation  and  cumula- 
tive voting.  The  more  intelligent  and  independent  class  of  voters 
understand  them  already. 

The  future  will  decide,  probably  as  the  result  of  slow  and  painful 
experience,  whether  the  criticisms  and  arguments  thus  advanced  are 
entitled  to  consideration. 

Meanwhile,  it  is  in  this  connection  worthy  of  notice  that  the  last 
charter  granted,  that  for  the  city  of  Everett,  approved  June  ii,  1892, 
has  provision,  in  one  of  the  two  bodies  of  which  its  legislative  depart- 
ment is  composed,  for  a  certain  degree  of  minority  representation. 
It  is  there  provided  that  the  board  of  aldermen  "  shall  be  composed 
of  six  members,  who  shall  be  elected  by  and  from  the  qualified  voters 
of  the  city,"  to  serve  for  a  term  of  two  years,  three  aldermen  to  be 
elected  each  year.  ...  In  the  election  of  aldermen  "  no  voter  shall 
vote  for  more  than  two  of  the  candidates  for  the  three  positions 
respectively.  If  a  voter  marks  more  than  two  names  for  the  three 
positions  to  be  so  filled,  his  ballot  shall  not  be  counted  for  any  of 
such   positions,  ...  In  every  municipal  election   .  .  .   each  voter 


5»  THE   CENTENNIAL   MILESTONE. 

may  vote  for  a  number  of  aldermen,  one  less  than  the  number 
to  be  elected,  and  shall  vote  for  no  more ;  and  any  ballot  which 
is  marked  for  a  greater  number  of  names  than  as  above  provided 
shall  not  be  counted  in  the  vote  for  aldermen."  (Acts  1892,  chap. 
355,  sect.  10.) 

It  will  be  observed  that  in  this  case,  while  no  provision  for  cumu- 
lative voting  is  made,  the  candidates  are  at  large,  and  a  certain, 
though  limited,  provision  for  minority  representation  is  secured.  It 
is  a  step,  although  not  a  long  step,  in  the  direction  of  the  larger 
change  of  constituency  above  suggested. 


F. 

The  following  extracts  from  a  very  interesting  address  on  the 
"  Government  of  Cities,"  and  the  "  Need  of  a  Divorce  of  Municipal 
Business  from  Politics,"  delivered  by  Mr.  Moorfield  Storey,  at  Buf- 
falo, N.  Y.,  on  September  30th,  189 1,  and  printed  in  the  New  Eng- 
latid  Magazine  for  June,  1892  (New  Series,  vol.  vi.  pp.  432-441),  have 
a  manifest  bearing  on  the  text :  — 

"  Every  city  government  is  not  as  bad  as  that  of  New  York,  but  every- 
where, with  rare  exceptions,  inferior  men  are  elected  to  municipal  office, 
and  any  man,  however  little  his  education  or  his  previous  training  may 
have  fitted  him  for  the  work,  is  considered  competent  to  deal  with  the 
comphcated  problems  of  municipal  government.  A  succession  of  men 
more  or  less  incompetent  follow  each  other  at  brief  intervals  over  the 
stage,  and  as  a  result  there  is  no  consistent  economical  administration  of 
a  city's  business.  Of  Boston,  a  year  ago,  a  gentleman  who  had  been 
studying  the  operation  of  the  various  departments  said,  '  The  methods  are 
such  that  no  business  house  could  adopt  them  and  keep  out  of  bankruptcy 
six  months.' 

"  A  third  cause  of  our  trouble  may  perhaps  best  be  illustrated  by  a  com- 
parison. A  manufacturing  corporation,  whose  stockholders  include  Re- 
publicans, Democrats,  Prohibitionists,  and  Mugwumps,  desires  a  president. 
Those  who  are  interested  choose  some  man  of  acknowledged  ability,  and 
without  asking  what  his  political  opinions  are,  say  to  him :  '  Become  our 
president,  and  we  will  pay  you  an  adequate  salary ;  we  will  give  you  the 
assistance  of  the  best  directors  that  we  can  select  from  our  own  members  ; 
you  shall  have  power  to  manage  our  business  as  you  think  best,  subject  to 
their  advice,  and  if  you  succeed  you  shall  keep  the  place  as  long  as  you 
like.'     The  city  seeking  a  mayor  says  to  the  same  man:  'Do  you  wish  to 


APPENDIX.  59 

become  our  mayor  ?  You  must  first  agree  to  pay  a  large  sum  to  the  cam- 
paign fund  for  expenses.  You  must  then  satisfy  the  heads  of  certain 
factions  that  they  and  their  followers  have  something  to  gain  by  your 
election  ;  and  they  are  practical  men,  who  are  not  to  be  satisfied  with  vague 
expressions  of  good  will,  and  will  want  something  very  definite.  You  must 
then  take  the  chances  of  a  campaign  in  which  all  your  sins  and  many 
which  you  have  never  committed  will  be  marshalled  against  you  in  the  daily 
papers,  and  you  will  be  exposed  to  every  kind  of  misrepresentation.  If 
you  are  elected,  we  shall  give  you  very  small  pay,  and  a  board  of  directors 
who  will  be  incompetent  to  help  you,  and  entirely  competent  to  embarrass 
and  perplex  you  at  every  turn.  You  will  receive  plenty  of  criticism  from 
every  corrupt  politician  whose  demands  you  either  cannot  or  will  not 
gratify,  but  little  or  no  encouragement  or  support  from  good  citizens,  who 
are  too  busy  with  their  own  affairs  or  too  modest  to  give  you  much  atten- 
tion or  assistance  or  even  applause,  and  who  treat  your  good  works  as  a 
matter  of  course,  while  they  are  swift  to  visit  on  you,  not  only  your  own 
sins,  but  the  shortcomings  of  every  city  official  ;  and  when  your  term  is 
over,  and  you  are  beginning  to  learn  the  duties  of  your  office,  we  will  remove 
you  in  order  to  put  some  other  unfortunate  victim  in  your  place.'  Is  it 
surprising  that  the  private  corporation  gets  its  president,  and  the  city  is 
obliged  to  look  elsewhere  for  its  mayor?" 


M272215 

:...  .-.  ''^ 

THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CAUFORNIA  LIBRARY 


» 


